Does it matter if your carrier is behind on the version of Android?

[boe]

Hello,

I'm used to WM so I'm not that familiar with Android yet. With my old phone (vogue/touch) I was always able to get a more up to date version of the OS on this site than Sprint had - typically by at least 6 months before Sprint released their version. The kitchen's here typically ran better and had more features than the official release of WM they would put on their site. Is it the same with Android? I was thinking about the Samsung because they have great screens but I wasn't sure if I could keep it current if Samsung was behind on their releases.