From your response. It is not your favorite..
For $200 would it be?
Do not bother with unlocking used phones. Locked phones are a hateful things, akin to buying a car that would only burn Shell gasoline. Buy an unlocked phone. I bought a Niu android phone at BrandsMart in Miami for under $54, tax included. All it needed was a memory card, and it can accommodate two SIM chips, so you can use it with one chip in the DR (I use Claro) and in the US or anywhere else where SIM is used (US, Canada) for the other. There is a feature for switching between the SIM chips. It has Bluetooth and can do Email and Gmail and will connect to the Internet, but I have not used it for that. The screen is the same size as a Galaxy Android, which I deem too small for any serious Internettery. But that is my preference. It has options for eight languages, including Spanish and English
I had a Claro SIM chip from a Samsung T Mobile flip phone I unlocked that I installed in it, and when I got to the SDQ airport all the Niu Android phone did was give some weird Chinese messages. The Claro people at SDQ proved to be incompetent, and said they did not know what to do to make it work, but when I took it to a Claro store in Barahona, they got it working in a minute or so. I had to bring my passport, since as we all know, people with passports do not ever steal phones. In retrospect, I should have brought the receipt from BrandsMart. The Samsung flip phone had very low volume and even with a new battery, would not hold a charge for over a day. It cost me $5.
The Niu phone has two cameras, a flashlight, web access (that I have not used) and will hold as much in photos and music as your MicroSD card will hold. Do not assume that anyone at the SDQ Claro office will do any more than the most basic stuff. Claro trains people well at other offices, and why they send the dummies to SDQ I cannot fathom.
If you DO buy a locked phone in the US, get it unlocked in the DR, because (1) it will be cheaper, and (2) you can test it working there and make sure it is unlocked. The scammers in Miami I took the T Mobile locked phone to charged me $20 and told me it was unlocked, but it wasn't. Getting unlocked in Barahona cost me under $200 pesos. They looked up some crap on the Internet and got it to pop up some alleged program that made it LOOK unlocked, but it wasn't. Some of the spendy new phones you buy in the US locked are ILLEGAL to unlock. Older ones are not.
In my opinion, if you want to make calls., leave messages and do the usual phone things, spending more than $100 is overkill. And of course, a $400 phone if lost, broken or stolen will set you back $400, whereas a $53 phone and a decent 8 gig chip might cost you $70.
The other large cell provider in the DR is Orange, and I have no knowledge of them besides knowing their favorite color.