Originally Posted by kidspud:
“Does the phone company still cause delay on the nexus devices, or is it all completely bypassed?”
Bypassed completely - the updates come straight from Google's servers. They are drip-fed, rather than available to everyone all at once like Apple's iOS updates, which is a source of frustration for some die-hard fans, but realistically you only wait up to about 5 days - much better than the months the manufacturers take to update. (The only exception is carrier-specific phones, which we don't get over here. But in the US, Verizon had their own Galaxy Nexus - the international one was incompatible, I believe - and updates for that came via Verizon. I think it was basically treated as the unloved step-sibling of the Nexus family).
With regards to Nexus updates, even though the N1 etc. may not still be supported, they will still be receiving some core upgrades through Google rolling out updates through the Play Services Framework, so realistically we have a system a bit like Apples where they are still being "updated" as such, but with some features (eg. 4.2 lock screen widgets) not arriving.