BlackBerry, like other smartphones, need a bit more care and "pampering" - when mine gets sluggish, I do a battery pull via an app called QuickPull that reboots the phone, and it works much better.  I have it set to do a reset once a week, automatically.  If it gets slow in between I'll manually reset it.  I've had my Blackberry (the original Bold 9650) over 2 years now and it hasn't given me any real problems at all.

The problems you describe (locking up, trackpad not responding, etc) could be due to too many apps open at once - it's easy to back out of an app without actually shutting it down, and if you get too many running at once, the phone slows down and locks up.  A reset/battery pull fixes that.

Perhaps another type of phone will work better for you, perhaps not - I love my BlackBerry, but it does take more care and attention than "them cheap little blue ones they never mess up " -