What you describe is one way to do it. However, I think market expectations are changing to faster and more frequent upgrades.

One used to follow a waterfall development model, specifying requirements, developing the sw, testing, fixing bugs, more testing, more bug fixing etc. Once you're ready, a lot of time has gone by, and the delivered functionality based on original specs will be outdated and surpassed by faster moving competitors.

So the dev approach for cutting edge devices was changed a while a go to a more agile process, giving us faster updates, more trial and error, more beta devices, at the cost of more bugs in the experienced by the end user.

For a device like the N900 based on Linux, supported by a community, I definitely prefer a fast update cycle with the risk of experiencing more bugs. To a big degree I bought the N900 for its potential and not for the at the time available function set. I was okay once I saw that my basic requirements were fulfilled.

But I do want new features, functions, apps, features steadily streaming to my device.

Now, this might a nightmare for some (think corporate users on closely managed networks), but software heaven for me.