Samsung - Galaxy S II Skyrocket 4G Mobile Phone - Black (AT&T)

Initially, I loved this phone. The bright display, the Samsung interface, touch screen, everything about it. I had just retired my Balckberry Bold and was glad to step up to something with a touch screen. I am in real estate and need a device on which I can easily access my contacts, calendar, search the internet and multiple list and even use data connectivity to update a security code so that I can access and open electronic lock boxes, which is an essential function for me. (The smart phone communicates with a special fob which converts a blue tooth signal to infrared in order to accomplish this.) Almost immediately, I began having intermittent issues with internet connectivity. Sometimes, for hours at a time, I received a message telling me there was no access to data and to try again later. Sometimes, the little circle will just spin endlessly.This was extremely frustrating, especially since the bars on my phone showed that I had good or excellent signal strength and the 4G icon was showing. There were numerous calls to AT&T and Samsung to try to resolve this issue. In all, I have spent over 6 hours trying to resolve my issues with this phone. I also found there were others with the same issue who posted on android and at&t forums, although both, AT&T and Samsung are refusing to acknowledge that this is a prevalent issue with some users. I removed the battery about a dozen times, removed and replaced the sim card, did the hokey-pokey and turned myself about, but to no avail. The device settings were checked and all were correct. Occasionally, the device accesses the internet quite well, sometimes slowly, and often, not at all. This seems to happen in a number of locations where I am often surrounded by people who are having no issues accessing the internet with their older smartphones. One forum suggested that the issue occurs for individuals who have the grandfathered unlimited data plans and it has been suggested by a few users or past users that there may be some sort of incompatibility issue with the unlimited data plan and LTE (but this has not been confirmed by AT&T). At one point, I had the customer service rep from AT&T delete my unlimitted data plan from my service and then add it back in. But, still, no internet connectivity. I talked with a manager of a local AT&T store and he told me that he had another customer with the same issue. The customer returned the phone and decided to wait it out with his own phone and plans to re-purchase in the future once the issue is resolved. In the meantime, yesterday, while on the phone with yet another customer service rep from AT&T, he suggested that I do a system restore on the phone. I told him that I was concerned about losing all of my contacts which were stored in the device. He assured me that they would not be lost and that I would only need to reinstall my applications......well, long story short, he walked me through the restore and I have lost ALL of my contacts, including hundreds of vendors, clients, past clients, prospects, etc. Since I had not backed up my information onto my laptop for several months, much of my personal information is forever lost. UGGH! I am not sure if I should try the Samsung Galaxy S2 (non LTE phone) as the manager of the AT&T store suggested.....or if I should just give up on AT&T all together. I think it will be a long while before LTE is rolled out in my area by AT&T. I wish that Verizon had comparable models. I am unable to wait for Verizon's release of the new Nexus phone and there is no definitive information about when this release will occur. I hate to give up unlimited data, but this phone has become an unlimited headache with very limited data. I could always swap the phone for an identical one in hopes that it is the actual phone that is defective.....but, I just don't know and I need to decide quickly. I have found the folks at Best Buy to be very helpful and knowledgeable. I think I may defer to their recommendations on this one.

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