AFAIU, the distinguishing characteristic of Nexus devices is that they're unlocked.

Yes, per Wikipedia:

"All Nexus devices feature an unlockable bootloader[3] to allow further development and end-user modification.[4]"

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Nexus

http://android-developers.blogspot.com/2010/12/its-not-rooti...

http://www.engadget.com/2011/11/03/galaxy-nexus-gets-rooted-...

Note that this still does you comparatively little good if you don't have CyanogenMod to put on it. Mind, I didn't say "no good", I said "little good".

It's the CyanogenMod dev team at Cyanogen Inc who've been impacted by the layoffs. There's still the independent effort, but it's lost a major employer and investor.

Good to know. I'll keep that in mind for my next phone.

Even if CyanogenMod suffers, there's plenty of other open-source Android versions out there. Unfortunately finding a clear, unbiased comparison of them is even harder than it is for different Linux distros. :(

I had to go through the goldcard process to flash my first Android phone, it took a while to get the right microSD card and you also had to install the Android SDK to use their flashing utilities, which wasn't the easiest thing to get up and running at the time.

I got there in the end, and I'm pretty sure most newer phones can be flashed in far easier ways.

For future reference you can user the Minimal ADB & Fastboot application rather than the full ADK.

Now, yes, but not when I was doing this for the first time.