lol you dont sound silly, I was asking loads of questions before I bought mine!
The signal - its only as good as the network coverage in your area, if you're on T mobile you can go to their website and put in your postcode and it'll tell you how much signal strength you'll get. If its another network then if you ring them and ask what its like in your area they should tell you. Mines always been fine.
You can assign photos to contacts so when you're scrolling through your phonebook you see a different picture for each person - I think thats what you mean?
When you send a text it saves them to your sentbox but you might be able to turn that feature off, I've never really tried!
Its VERY loud lol! I use the MP3 player quite a bit and if you turn the volume up to 100% its loud enough to hear anywhere in the house, probably half way down the street aswell
The sounds also really clear though.
Battery life - I wont lie, its the worst I've ever had on a phone but only cos I use mine alot for the internet and stuff. I put mine on charge every night so at least its full in the morning. If I dont use it alot it lasts about 2 days.
Anymore questions just ask 8)