What exactly is a dead end phone? I have been using various phones the last couple of years and I can't say I have seen much better support. I have three androids in my family stuck to 2.1 2.2 and 2.3 respectively, all newer than the N900. Symbia phones of the same era are stuck to the horrible s60v5. Only apple supports 3 generations, but the downside to that is that afterwards they kill them with fire. It's virtually impossible even for the developer to support iPhone 3g right now as there isn't even any target in the sdk. And with the closed ecosystem the user isn't even able to hack his own solutions. On the contrary, when evernote changed API somebody promptly jumped in and fixed qvernote for the N900.

My point is, grass isn't always greener on the other side.