Yeah. Part of that is radio support (open source phone projects have had this problem) and packaging - you still need a separate packaged image per phone model. Openmoko had the support problem (iirc) pretty early on.
Until those ecosystem issues are fixed, dumping on a $150 phone for concessions that a $800-1000 phone doesn't have to make us pretty ridiculous.
Again, that is my point. No company has any incentive, or has made any moves to, fix the ecosystem. They're happy how there are no standards or documented APIs, how everything is a closed binary blob that changes from one insignificant version to the next. They don't demand any kind of support or openness from hardware suppliers, they don't form any standards or demand adherence to them, despite their massive market power (if Samsung wanted open or standards-compliant hardware, they'd get it), because they directly financially benefit from the broken status quo they created.
> concessions that a $800-1000 phone doesn't have to make
You can spend 2x that on an Android phone, and the software situation won't be any better. This is deliberate.
What do you mean? Wireless cards on PCs are dirt cheap and have fantastic forwards-compatibility with future OS releases. There's no reason mobile network cards should be any different.
> you still need a separate packaged image per phone model
Only if you insist on packaging the image yourself. If you don't lock bootloaders and provide API/ABI documentation on how to interact with your hardware (through a binary blob if necessary), the community will often do the rest.
The Android update dumpster fire is a self-inflicted problem.
Wifi is unlicensed spectrum. FCC and counterparts have restrictions on what cell transceivers can do and that has repurcussians when the limits may not be enforced with a misbehaving driver. Check out the old openmoko lists for details.
We haven't had an IBM PC-level of openness from a phone hardware platform. Not one. Shitting on incremental improvements (like the serviceability of this Nokia) is counterproductive.
Until those ecosystem issues are fixed, dumping on a $150 phone for concessions that a $800-1000 phone doesn't have to make us pretty ridiculous.