Wow...I'm not the only person dissatisfied wih my Instinct!

Hi all, I bought my Instinct in January 2009 and was assured that it was the next best thing to the iPhone.  I'm in Canada and have my service with Bell, and the more I keep reading about the problems associated with the Bell Samsung Instinct the more I become discouraged.  I thought it worked OK for calls, and for sending and receiving text messages and so far it's only locked up on me a couple of times where I've had to take the battery out and put it back in again to get it going.

There are a couple of problems I noticed.  One, although it's no fault of the OS or the unit itself is that my friend has an iPhone and he can download tons of applications for free, yet Bell charges between $5 and $7 for each application you want to download. There is nothing really interesting in the way of apps or games for the Instinct like there are with the iPhone.  At this point in time I was kind of wishing I had gotten the iPhone instead, but at the time I got mine Bell didn't carry the iPhone.

The second thing is, there is no Wifi.  You don't need to subscribe to the Internet browsing service on the iPhone to surf the 'net or download apps...all you have to do is connect to any free Wifi service and surf and download free apps and games till the cows come home, yet with Bell's version of the Instinct, you MUST subscribe to the Internet to view anything but the charges for downloading are outrageous!  There's one particular Slots game I liked on the iPhone that I wanted on my Instinct but Bell doesn't offer it and if they did it would be $7 to download.

With that, I got rid of my Internet browsing service after a year or so.  It was costing me $10/month anyway and I hardly ever used it.

Thirdly, where are all the extra ring tones you are supposed to be able to download?  I don't like any of the ones that come pre-loaded on the Instinct.  I tried sending an MP3 to my Instinct through email.  I was told by a technical support rep on Bell.ca's website that I can do that with any MP3 and when I get it, to save the attachment and set it as a ring tone.  When I tried this, I got a MIME error and I told them and they said that I'd have to contact Samsung technical support!!!  WTF???  On the iPhone apparently, you can assign any MP3 as a ring tone at anytime, without issue.  And you can transfer it easily from your computer or a web site.

I'm eligible for an upgrade in January of 2011 and if Bell is carrying the iPhone then, in whatever generation it is by then, I'm seriously considering getting an iPhone and I'm sorry I didn't jump on the iPhone bandwagon with another service provider.

For now, I only use it for answering the few calls I get, opening the front door and sending the occasional text message.  I hardly think I'm getting my money's worth.