What will my Reality do with my text messages after it is deactivated?

Hello all, I have been a very happy owner of a Reality for years now.  Loved the phone and it has been great however, it has outlived its prime and I need to get a new phone.  However, I have text messages on the phone that I need to have access to.  When I get a new phone and cut the service to the Reality, will I still be able to see my old text messages when I turn the Reality on or will they vanish when the phone is deactivated?  Thanks so much in advance!

My educated guess is that all your content like pictures, ringers, texts, etc. will stay put on the phone.

I have two non-smartphones -- a u370 (which is basically just a reissue of the Reality) and an LG phone. When the battery runs down on one of them and needs to be recharged, I deactivate it and activate the other phone so I've got a phone to use during the recharging. As best as I've ever been able to tell, the content stored both on the phone's internal memory and on the phone's memory card remains intact.

I've switched back and forth tons of times, and at this moment several text messages from last summer on the temporarily deactivated u370 are still sitting there.

About the only way that I know of to make a backup of a text message is to forward from the phone a copy of it to either another phone or to an email address.