One of a number of reasons why I stick to low end devices (£250 tops) and stick with SIM free as mobile networks sit on firmware for ages on the grounds that they are 'optimising the customer experience' (so injecting branding and apps), also seen it put on this very forum that baseband had to be tweaked so a phone didn't over signal.
While I'm not a mobile network engineer I'm a little suspect of that one as isn't that why there are ratified standards?
But we digress.......
Perhaps there's an argument for Android to be more like Linux or Windows which would allow upgrades so long as the hardware is capable with the drivers being added on separately though to do this might need any upgrades to be done from a PC or Mac.
Apple have pretty much continued to sell directly to the end customer whereas the Android manufacturers have to appeal to the operators/service providers because they are their biggest customer accounts.
Hardware running Android is also more varied crucially the base is open source so stuff gets developed quicker and features that Android had years ago take several versions of the iPhone to appear...
Just sayin....
