[gTen]

Personally I find it hard to take seriously any article that uses Fragmentation and user attack as a bases.

First of all, fragmentation is a myth. It does not exist, so what that each phone is running a different version of Android. Do they even know what the difference is? most people don't. Sure it is nice to have updates, I am not arguing. But the people that care makes up 1% of the users max. And in terms of apps, if you bought a top end device 99% of the apps usually would work for 2 years easily. Most programmers including myself do not use the latest API unless we really have to anyways, its something that comes naturally in development.

And user attacks effect all platforms, you can wall garden a user all you want it won't help, there is a saying:

"If you make something idiot proof, someone out there will go make a better idiot"

I know not everyone is technologically advanced and all, but you have to have at least a certain amount of knowledge.

As long as the carriers have control of everything, I doubt faster updates will come, as proof the Samsung Galaxy S was the first one with gingerbread a month ahead of everyone else. The second fastest was Motorola with the Droid X.

Personally based on trend the fastest phone that will get upgrades is:

1) The phone based on the Nexus
2) Verizon Motorola Droid series
3) HTC (if they did not make the nexus)

in that order..

The problem is most news networks have 0 clue what they are talking about, they assume that the moment an update comes to a Nexus device every other device is outdated. This is not the case, if we were to compare Android with iOS and WP7. Release of a Nexus device is equivalent to when microsoft sends out developer phones and apple launches iOS betas. Yes, Nexus is running a BETA OS!!!! and I find it sad that most people don't realize this.

Now I know most people are going, WTH how can you say thing, who releases BETA software to the public? Well thing is Betas are usually pretty stable and have all features working. If you ever tried FireFox beta for example, I never had any issues using it and prefer it over final.

And look at this statement from Apple:

"Siri is available in Beta only on iPhone 4S and requires Internet access."

And thats exactly what the Nexus device is. You get Final version 3 - 4 months after the Nexus device came out.