I may look into jailbreak/rooting options that are compatible with ongoing Verizon service, for the phone.
In future, if I don't switch to an iPhone, I may well go with another carrier, and just eat the cost of e.g. a prepaid Moto G for the times when I travel and need the network covereage. Still, seems ridiculous. And if not Google, the FCC should be taking a good, hard look at Verizon Wireless. At some point, negligence should apply that, if nothing else, gets their spectrum allocations revoked. That would get their attention, fast.
P.S. Maybe a Google lobbyist and/or lawyer could have a quiet little conversation with their FCC contacts about this?
And I apologize, after that rant I realize it doesn't really have anything to do with the topic, but I've sunk the cost already!
There were some hiccups with the upgrades to 5.x, but I didn't get caught by those. News reports taught me to be a bit conservative, in exercising a bit of delay before applying OS updates if there was no looming security fiasco.
Compared to my parents' contemporary and more expensive Samsung tablet, with Verizon LTE (and thus, Verizon as well as Samsung in the middle), that is still stuck on 4.4.1 or 4.4.2, the last I looked... And with some crappy third party calendar app as the default that had my mother confused for a while...
Well, via that comparison and others, I'm agreeing with the other commenter that if you can go straight Nexus, that seems to be a better way to go WRT the Android platform.
I'm hitting "tired"; otherwise, I might be able to think of some of the software concerns I've had that are not OS / updates specific.
Oh, I remember the time I added some photos to Keep, to learn that there was no way to keep them from syncing while on the cell connection as opposed to WiFi.
And, I could lament the whole "fish around on the web for random articles, for your documentation" approach, these days.
Anyway, I'm mostly responding to show a bit of support, despite our differing satisfaction levels / experiences. When something doesn't work, too often the environment/app leaves us feeling SOL. They got my money, so f--- me! ;-)
Verizon has long been a bastard with regard to releasing updates. However, travel takes me where they are the only thing that works (other than a local carrier that makes no sense back at home). They also tend to have better coverage here at home.
BUT, they told me that one of the selling points of this model on Verizon was that they were committing to releasing updates in a timely manner.
My fault for believing Verizon. But... Google's fault for not pressuring them. iPhones on Verizon get updates. This becomes "simple math", for the user on Verizon. And, Verizon has a lot of users, here in the U.S.
P.S. Even if Google is not in a position to effectively do anything about this, they should recognize the pressure this applies to users to switch platforms. Something I would imagine they ARE interested in.