How can I backup my contact list without rooting my phone? Up until now, I was always storing my new contact phone numbers on my SIM card because that way, when I buy a new phone, I have all my numbers transfered automatically.

However, it really is nice to be able to store pictures and more information next to a phone number.

I am thinking therefore, on beginning to store new contacts on my phone.

How can I backup and restore all contacts on a new phone without rooting my current phone ( which is a Samsung Galaxy S, by the way ) ?
Did you try it over the build-in Android &lt;-> Google Account synchronization? That keeps your contacts always synched up and moreover you have them available also online within Gmail. From there you can even export them in different kind of formats as an additional backup if you like.

More details, perhaps...: In contacts->menu->more->contacts storage (translated from my non-english-speaking phone...), you can select Google.  That will store any new contacts you add there, but as far as I know does not handle pre-existing contacts on your phone.  What I did to sync up these old contacts was contacts->menu->import/export, and exported the contacts to a file on the SD card.  I then used the gmail app on the phone to send this .vcf file to myself as an attachment (menu in the gmail application to attach a file) and used gmail from my PC to import the contact list from that message, merge any duplicates etc. etc.