I thought I'd report my experience with the customer service.
At the moment, I'm not concerned about a replacement for the phone, however since I had extended my contract with the phone, my goal was to get the terms of the contract modified (essentially voided) while I evaluated other hardware.
I talked with the initial operator for a bit, explaining the issue. I was polite, explained the issue with the lack of support the phone has received, the lack of updates. The issue was elevated to a supervisor level. At this point I hit the brick wall. They did listen, I'll give them that much, however the woman was completely unwilling to acknowledge there is a problem and basically kept returning to the point of that I was out of the "buyer's remorse" 14 day period and she wasn't going to do anything at all.
I bent over backwards to explain that I was generally happy with TMO, realized they were taken for a ride too by Samsung but as customers we're not stuck with a bait-and-switch. Still no dice.
So I'm not sure what to do. Up to this point I was willing to give TMO a pass on this, but that pretty much crumbled the cookie. TMO support now looks just as bad as Samsung. I don't know whether I'll stay with them or not (leaning towards 'not' at this point, but I may cool down a bit). If it comes down to it, I can buy out the contract, painful but better than another few years of this kind of service. If I buy it out, I doubt I'll ever return.
I know none of you can do anything about it. I'm just pissing and moaning. Maybe be warned if you take this tack though, they are starting to put their feet down.