There may be some truth to that for the type of person who reads HN, but it's certainly not true for the wider public. Most people don't care about having full control of their mobile device, they just want it to work.
It's not irrelevant to them -- it's a concern that they are unable to articulate.
Anecdotal support: for the Android users I know who fall into this group, it manifests as a vague set of complaints -- certain apps don't run, had to take it into the store a lot, app claiming to be available for Android not available for their phone -- which are all symptoms of having what is called here an orphaned phone.
So yeah, they don't know or care whether they are running version 1.x or 2.y. But they do know that they are generally dissatisfied with their phone.