Samsung is a good company and they make quality electronics and I trust their brand as far as the home electronics go and they maintain their quality since they invest big in those product line-ups. In the past, samsung was not a big player in mobile phone market, they might have made crappy product, or they might have skimped on their product support, but that was past. Have you heard about their latest ambition? If they have a goal of selling 10 million of these phones, then it means they have decided to play big in the mobile handset market and therefore they will have to do quality improvements in their products and their support, else they wont last very long. If a company made bad product three years ago, then it does not automatically mean they will make bad product today too, especially when they make good products in other areas, which means they can pull it off if they just put enough money and resources behind it, which they are going to do given their ambition and their effort to release the Galaxy S phones on all major carriers in US. Besides I am pretty sure this device will keep getting the attention and love of developer community given its wide spread of carriers. If Samsung wont give us Gingerbread, I am sure dev community will. If even that won't happen, then people on qualified Sprint plans will get another upgrade in one year time to move away to another device.
You had a bad experience with a Samsung phone, and you want to complain about it, it is totally fine. You can wait few months and see other people's experience before getting a Samsung phone, or if you don't want to get another phone from Samsung Pever, and this is totally fine too. Nobody here is trying to convince you otherwise, and we, who believe that Galaxy S devices will maintain the honor being amongst the top android devices for few months to come at least, will still get this phone nonetheless. I am not trying to nitpick here, but I hope you do realize this time around things are not the same as they were at the time of Instinct. Phones are not the same, market is not the same, competition is more fierce, galaxy s is being released on multiple carriers and has already grabbed the attention of dev community, samsung wants to play bigger and has already released the source code for available devices. Don't just assume Samsung's attitude towards this phone based on your previous experience from couple of years ago. They are a big corporation, and have bigger goals this time and might just give better support also. I can totally understand your frustration. While I can't guarantee Samsung's continued and exhaustive support, I, and many others here, believe that things will be better this time than they were from the times of Instinct. Cheer up!!