Fair point (for the most part), but the illustration graphic shows a Nexus One... which was indeed released with 2.1 (the latest and greatest). Not terribly ma

Fair point (for the most part), but the illustration graphic shows a Nexus One... which was indeed released with 2.1 (the latest and greatest). Not terribly material, just silly. Now, on the substance: the reason why many of the phones lag behind is that the manufacturers and carriers have the ability to customize the system - sometimes to add features (multi-touch appeared in some HTC phones before the Android core), sometimes to junk-ify the phone. Some of this I predict will fade, as manufacturers/carriers find the value of having the LatestAndGreatest OS will outweigh the perceived benefits of customization. Some of it probably won't, which is the unfortunate but mostly unavoidable consequence of producing an open/open-source platform. My guess is that over time Google will make a greater effort to distinguish the phones that will be kept up-to-date (because they have few OS customizations) from the ones that just use the Android OS as the basis for their own distro (this is the very fine semantic difference between "Android" and "Android with Google"). How closely consumers will distinguish the two, is of course another matter entirely. Edit: As an aside, I've been surprised (though perhaps I shouldn't be) how many of my non-tech friends don't even really identify "Android" as a brand - when I tell people we develop for Android, I often get a blank stare - they don't realize that the Droid, Nexus One, etc. have much of anything in common. A branding failure, on the one hand - but also an opportunity to correct some of these other issues.