Just noticed the historical chart at the bottom. It seems that practice of releasing updates is definitely increasing - at the beginning of the year, the average version was actually _decreasing_, as already obsolete 1.5 and 1.6 phones were presumably being sold faster than updates were being released. However, it does look like you're still likely to be left in the cold if you've got something other than a HTC or Motorola (particularly an LG - suckers!) or in some cases even if you live outside the US.

Also, that's a survey of the android market, which will be slightly skewed towards newer handsets (i.e. people who've had their android for a year probably have every app they might use already)

Every day I regret buying my mytouch 3g instead of waiting for the nexus one on the same network at the same price.

My guess is that most phones that are still on 1.5 or 1.6 will never be updated to 2.1 or 2.2

If the phone is 2.1 now, it will probably get 2.2 by the end of the year.

2.1 users should check out Edwin. It does a lot of this stuff, it's free and its made by a HN reader.

My Verizon Droid just updated to 2.2 yesterday.