[darklajid]

Maybe (I cannot say a thing about TouchWiz).

Do you get reasonable fast upgrades for old (like, month old) phones though, if Android moves forward? Do you get updates at all? Does it (the 'improved' ROM) include unremovable crapware?

Even if all answers to the questions above are positive (as in, the 'right' answer): Do you buy a phone for the software improvements on top of a widely available platform?

I buy decent hardware (sturdy, well made, slick) & support for improvements to the software that this manufacturer didn't even create in the first place. So far, only Nexus devices seem to fit the bill.

[CrazedGeek]

Based on my experiences with the Epic 4G Touch, Galaxy S3, and Note 2, in order: Yes, for at least one major version (this is a little hard to qualify). Yes, but nearly all of it is disableable (there's one app that isn't, but it's small and never runs, so I don't care too much). No, but if I'm buying the phone already, it's a nice extra.

I tend to buy my devices based purely on what they can do now as opposed to that and future support, which I know isn't really common here. If it's a tradeoff between future software improvements (which recently haven't been all that substantial: 4.2 was nothing special, and 4.1 was only slightly better than ICS) and current hardware capabilities (those phones are all reasonably thin and have removable batteries and SD card slots, two things that the Nexus line currently lacks), I'm going with the hardware.