Parents of tweens and young teens: What's your strategy for managing your child's cell phone usage?

Our daughter is 12½ and, for the first time, will be walking to and from school. My husband insists on getting her a cell phone before the school year starts since she will be walking (even though the school is practically in our back yard).

I’m willing to go along with this, but the two of us don’t agree on what features she should be allowed to have. He wants her to be able to send and receive texts and photos, but I think she should only be able to use the cell phone as a phone for at least the next couple of years. I’m sure we’ll reach a compromise we can live with, but I’m wondering how other parents handle their kid’s cell phone.

Can they do it all with their phones, or do they have restrictions? How well does that work out? Does your cell phone company give you good options for managing your child’s phone?

For the record, our daughter hasn’t had any interest in getting a cell phone. Her best friends do not have phones. However, after an incident yesterday where she briefly got lost in the woods, she has said she will now be open to having her own phone.