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Comment by mitchellhislop | Hacker News Reader

One small point, "Google Experience" refers to the OS installed, not who the device is made by. The Desire and Droid are both Google Experience devices-Those are the only devices that get access to all the Google API's and apps.

Also, updates being slow are more often than not the fault of the carrier, not the manufacturer.

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ok. I stand corrected.

Still. Phones like the G1 and the N1 seem to have closer ties to Google and seem to be updated more quickly and painlessly, hence my next try with Android is much more likely to be a N2 than any Sense-corrupted HTC thing without update guarantees.

That's not true. Non-"Google Experience" have plenty of access to all of the Android Google APIs, etc. If they didn't no apps that used Google Maps, Navigation, etc would work. The Google APIs are something that 3rd party apps rely on. Google restricting their availability would literally destroy the Market in one fell swoop.

The only thing that changes is whether or not they can print "Google" on the phone.

Not true. There are 2 different versions of every android release-the "google" version and the non-google version. They have different capability. We just havent seen a major device launch without the google version.

As an android dev, you learn not to rely on google api's for things. Much like twitter devs have learned not to trust the platform

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