I agree with you that manufacturer’s O/S support has been lacking. Some are better than others and I think you'll see it only get better because now people have many different options for high end android phones that they'll move to the ones with the most support.
Manufacturer O/S support to me is really meaningless anyway. Even after my carrier updated to 2.2, I was still running a custom 2.2 ROM that was better than stock anyway. I've now been running 2.3 for a couple months and just like 2.2, I don't see the carrier's official 2.3 being anywhere near as good as the custom ROM I'm running now. Nearly all the carrier ROM’s are just the basic Android with their own UI and bloatware added to it anyway.
I’ve been thinking of rooting. Which custom ROM do you suggest?
Do you see what you are writing? It's Geek speak.
The average phone user does NOT want to worry about what version ROM he needs to install in his phone. . . compared to what version ROM the manufacturer shipped with his phone. . . to get functionality. The average user wants it to just work... as advertised... to update, as advertised... and to forget it, other than when he wants it to work and update, and otherwise not get in the way as it does it.
What you wrote reminds me of the heady days of playing with my Commodore and Amiga computers and how much fun it was to trick them out with new add-ons to the OS and how exciting each incremental upgrade and tweak to hardware and OS speed made things different... and how it was necessary to be a member of the local Amiga Users' Group to even make some of the hardware and software work together. It was no different for the Atari users, the DOS users, and later the Windows users... there were user groups to support them. And some of us made lots of money supporting all of the users who did not have the time to join the groups and learn how to do it themselves.
It was a fun time... but that was when computing was a hobby... and I have long grown out of that and have a lot better things to do with my time than tweak a device to get it to work right or spend hours trying to figure out what I need to get it to do what I want or look the way I want.
I am starting to get calls from people with Android phones asking "How do I get my phone to save changes to my contact lists?!" or "I put in a new name in my contacts, and now it's GONE! What happened to it?" and "Where is the flippin' setting for ______?" I can't help them because I don't have an Android phone and can't step them through the process. . . and the one's I've used are NOT intuitive like an iPhone.
One acquaintance of mine, who had her iPhone stolen, who was no where near the end of her contract, got a cheap Android as a replacement: she is continually swearing at the thing because it is NOT easy to use, unlike what the AT&T salesperson told her—"It's just as good, if not better than your iPhone!"—and does a lot less than what she was used to, with an inconsistent user interface. They are, at best, a make do; a poor substitute for the better choice. She's counting the days until her contract is up and can go back to an iPhone.