Brittany Lofton spots them all the time: teens and college students clutching their beat-up cellphones, with screens so cracked that spider-web-like patterns creep across the glass.

Sure, the screen’s razory shards make reading a text and posting Instagram photos super blurry, not to mention slightly painful.

But that’s part of the appeal.…

Haha, you're just trying to justify not replacing your cracked screen phone by associating with the cool kids!

i have a cracked screen 3GS because a friend gave it to me, thus I am now in "smartphone" world with all the other "connected" people of "21st century."

1st world discards therefore represent a digital class divide. "One man's trash >> "

I get a lot of pity awwws from people, sometimes it works in my favor.

Shouldn't there be a straightforward way to replace a cracked screen without having to replace the whole device???

There are... 1) either source the digitizer/lcd from ebay + DIY; or 2) Often repairmen offer a simple $40 repair.  For example, there's a little old Jewish man that does this in a workshop cottage down in Beverly Hills... $40, 10 minutes right in front of you. 

So the people who keep a cracked screen must really want a cracked screen.

You're being too binary.  For me, the UI/touch experience hasn't suffered a functional loss, so it's not worth the money/effort to fix it, and the 3GS camera sucks balls.  I would rather upgrade to 4+, N8, S3+.  I'm a unique case of mobile device user though.

I just find the 3GS to be painfully slow in today's world, so screen or no screen, I'd be upgrading too.

those replies were on my birthday!  slow for what?  processing of tasks?  it probably does suffer specs-wise, in terms of RAM, but generally how intensive are power tasks?  What is the most intensive processing/computing that an iPhone will do?  Isn't it more of an access device, and not a computing device?