Well folks. The Instinct experience with me will be on hold indefinitely. Once the bugs have been worked out, I might return to this great piece of hardware. I want to relay to all that I finally after 8+ years with Sprint finally had an issue resolve to my full satisfaction!!

My first Instinct had issues where it would crash 3 to 4 times daily. After multiple calls to CS, emails to
dan@sprint.com and calls to tech support, data restores/soft resets/hard resets etc. I took the phone in and was given a brand new Instinct straight out of the box. (I watched her tear open the packaging on the phone.)
Even though all contact with Sprint did not yield consistent information and results...the MOST productive had to be
dan@sprint.com. Now, I have to say...I believe it is all up to the representative that you deal with, and how you come across. The rep that I was in contact with stayed with me thru much of the process. From answering questions before the phone came out...to customer care at this point in time.
The end result is that I have a brand new phone being overnighted to my house. I have to pay a slight difference for the "exchange," but I get to keep the Instinct.
For those of you that are having problems, being patient and persistent. Don't let tip your hand of all the knowledge you may know about how their system works. Hope that you too will have a good consumer/provider relationship as I had.
For the Instinct, I will put everything back in the packaging and hope that eventually the updates and bug fixes enables the phone to be fully functional for its INTENDED and ADVERTISED purposes. When that happens, my wife and I will decide who gets what phone.