Lots of gymnastics to "prove" Android fragmentation isn't as bad as it looks. Pointless.
It bothers me a lot that nexus devices I purchased this year will be long forgotten months from now when Apple is prepping an iOS 7.1 beta for the iPhone 4 as we speak.
I know that google's model is to update core functionality through applications rather than via whole operating system updates but it's annoying that google doesn't strong arm the abusive carriers/vendors into allowing updates to the underlying OS in a timely fashion.
It gives the impression that an android device is what it is at the time it is purchased but an Apple device may evolve. I consider it extremely odd considering how Google has proven to themselves over an over that that upgrading people's common denominator platform is a great strategy (Chrome).
Carriers and handset manufactures have too many interests into product differentiation.
I've been seeing this expressed since the days of eclair, it was kind of audaciously false then, and its only got less true since.
Now we're at the stage were you can claim your phone will soon be "long forgotten" in one paragraph, admit that Google provides updates for core functionality via the app store in the next, then claim your device can't "evolve" in the one following that.
If you want to complain about OS updates, that's fine. But claiming devices are frozen in time when they leave the store is insane. The very definition of a smartphone is that you can install and update apps on it. The ecosystem around Android has been growing faster than anything Google could achieve alone.
Contrast this to iOS - whenever there is a new iOS version, developers have to scramble to update their apps because they very often break or the UI is broken by changes, etc.
Android is much much less hassle when OS updates roll around, and I develop for both.
[Rant]: I find that it gets a bit silly in iOS land, in the sense that local (South African) devs who have abandoned/flopped apps had to go and update their apps after forever to match the 'look and feel' of the new iOS, whereas with Android one can go without noticing that.