That's simply not true. Samsung is in control of the update on several variants of the GSM Galaxy Nexus. Everything other than "yakju" and "takju". A simple search would reveal this.

<quote>One more thing on the Waze plug and then I'm done. Map problems, with Google maps, Garmin, Tom Tom or any other mapping tool, you are at the mercy of their map editors as to when roads get added. With Waze, if you see a problem, you can login and fix the problem. It took my Tom Tom more than a year to be updated with a recent new high speed route. Waze had it before the Tom Tom update did. But even better was another more recent construction project. The new road was in place on the Waze map within weeks of it opening to traffic. It was most likely added within hours of opening but the map tiles are only rebuilt every few weeks. That road opened last September, I don't expect it to show up on my Tom Tom for months at the earliest. And even Google maps took a couple months to start showing it.

I see a problem with the maps in Waze, I go in and fix it. Within a few weeks the change is live.

And I have no connection to Waze, other than I'm a big fan of it.</quote>

You know Google lets you do this too, right? http://www.google.com/mapmaker

I don't know why everyone says that.

I'm an Android developer. It's trivial to write applications that "runs on all of the devices and takes advantage of the features on newer platforms".

It's as easy as:
if (api level <= 4) { /* make it work without all the features */ } else { /* make it work, with the new features */ }