Brawndo: it's got what plants crave!

Does everyone have to buy a new car equipped with all the integrated RFID/transponder gadgetry to participate in the mandated tracking system?
This type of thing, and the upcoming "black box" additions to new cars sold in the USA, are perfect examples of why you should not buy new cars frequently. Instead, repair whatever goes wrong with your current/old car and stop being so damn wasteful. Pick a good car that you like and keep it going.
I learned how to do almost all of my own car repair for this purpose. It's not nearly as hard as understanding C programming or being fluent with the Linux shell. You just have to man up and get your hands dirty. The rewards come as bountiful savings of money and inability to comply with new-vehicle tracking mandates.

I'm totally picturing this happening like it's an episode of the Simpsons in my head.

If it works, use it. Like the other folks said, a lot of phones are left unsupported by their providers with no official updates. Then you have the choice of using it and not worrying about the OS, as long as it works right. That's fine for the average user who isn't likely to do a lot of USB-to-computer interfacing with it to do the upgrades or mods...
But if you really want updated software you can look into things like Cyanogenmod. Doing that got my unsupported phone all the way up to Android 2.3, whereas Motorola left it languishing with the only supported version at 2.2 or .1
2.3 has been doing well on my phone for awhile now, but if the Cyanogen guys put out a stable 4.0 release for my phone I'll definitely try it.

Motorola's spinoff co. Freescale already developed an arguably better concept based on magnetically-stored bits called MRAM. Unfortunately they never got it to scale freely enough to make actual DIMM modules with it. What they do have is lots of types of embedded memory chips for small applications, embedded systems and whatnot. Those are on the market now.
The MRAM concept would be awesome if they ever got it onto a PC or server motherboard, though. It requires zero power to retain its data, since the individual flipping bit states are stored by tiny magnets. That means you could turn your computer on/off just like a dumb appliance like an old TV set or radio, and you'd still be right where you left off (like S3 sleep state with no power supplied). Or you could cease worrying about battery backup systems, since it could lose power and come right back.