Then what other things were you talking about that are supposedly so different it could constitute as bait and switch?
Antenna, signal strength, app compatibility.
Let me be clear - having 6 different products with the identical name, some wih silly carrier tag names attached, with a variety of features and screens and so on ... is confusing, but not illegal in any way. As DArtagnan says "Smartphone market is a completely ridiculous and hellish jungle". So very true.
But if I can get a Samsung Galaxy S 2 model SCH-R760, the same model phone as other people, and have different signal levels, different app compatibility, and so on ... there is just plain something wrong.
How is that any different from any other spec listing for any hardware product?
The Smartphone market is a completely ridiculous and hellish jungle if your objective is to make an informed decision about the perfect phone for you. I fail to see how Samsung is negatively set apart in that way.
What I have generally seen is that a phone model is generally the same internals and screen, with potentially a minor tweak for carrier differentiation and naming schemes beyond absurd. So the LG Optimus might have had crazy names at different carriers but the underlying model is unique. Samsung is unique in using a single moniker to describe multiple phones.
The S2 is a great example - my 4.52" version is amazingly fast at many things, and has a great build quality and great screen. I have seen others from AT&T that are a$$. They wouldn't win best of anything. Yet it is a Galaxy S2.
As for Apple ... they are terrible about these naming things. I mean, last week I got an iPad. I also got an iPad in 2010. So I have 2 iPads and an iPad 2. The difference is that they do this on a generational basis, not side-by-side.