Yeah that's the idea of an open platform. But the carriers rape the platform and it is not open. Therefore, the OS is completely controlled, by your carrier. You know this and know what I'm saying
I'm gonna make the same point I've made several times.
It's critical to differentiate between "Google Experience" devices, and all other Android devices.
Google has almost literally nothing to do with non-Experience devices. Carriers go here:
Welcome to Android | Android Open Source
They download that source, compile their own ROM to match the hardware they've built, then when it's finished, they'll pay Google a license fee so they can include proprietary stuff like Gmail, Gtalk, Android Market, YouTube.
You want a proper Android device, get a Google Experience device. G1, N1, Droid1 have all been in this category.
There will always be at least 1 Google Experience device in every generation of phones. Right now it's still the N1, but there'll be a new one within a few months. We'll know what it is soon enough. My best guess is that it'll be the new Droid with the Tegra 2 that is rumored to be announced at CES 2011, which runs Jan 6-9. That would place it almost exactly a year after the N1 was announced.
It seemed that the G2 was going to be an an experience device, but given that T-Mobile refused or disabled a feature (tethering), it isn't.
casey, did you say earlier that you liked the new htc sense 2.0? would that make you keep htc sense or would you still flash a vanilla rom?
I'd always flash CyanogenMod if it was an option. But Sense 2 is nice and I'd like to use it more deeply, particularly the new features on HTCSENSE.com that so far only the Desire HD and Desire Z can use.