Totally agree, after all Android is just an OS, there's no guaranteed quality or user experience across different carriers and manufacturers are the same just because they are all "Android phones". This could totally ruin the Android brand since there is too much uncertainty about what people will get.

Unlocked Nokia N900 allow you to do that. Available on Aamazon for $400. It runs maemo, but people are trying to port android over to it. I myself own the N900 and I am quite happy with it.

On a side note, I like the Nokia's hardware over Apple's.

But that is because of the carriers. Why do you think Motorola implemented a signed multistage boot process? I'm sure they didn't say, "We want to limit our customers and waste engineering resources on a problem that voids the warranty anyway and doesn't matter to us".

Nah, they reacted to VZW's threats.

Nitpick: regardless of what the scare-message says when you unlock your N1's bootloader, changing the software on a device cannot (by law, in the US) void the warranty on the hardware, unless it is demonstrable that the software modification actually damaged the hardware.

why then is the Milestone (international Droid) locked down even worse even though the phone is sold in multiple countries without any carrier lock or even just carrier branding?