The mileage you end up getting out of your phone can oftentimes depend on the software support it gets, or the lack thereof. Tonight we’ve got news on a few models that demonstrate all too well how some smartphones thrive at the hands of their carriers and independent developers, while others are hung out to dry.

Samsung’s Captivate on AT&T finally got a Froyo update last week, but that’s only the start of the good news for its owners. Now the phone has its own build of CyanogenMod 7 based on Android 2.3.3 for you to try your hand at installing. This is labeled as just a “test release” but it’s reportedly quite stable and usable. What lingering bugs remain should be ironed out in the coming weeks.

On the flip side of the update coin, we have Motorola’s Charm and Flipout. While the size of those phones, with their unconventional designs for Android handsets, never offered much promise for them becoming long-lived Android favorites, it’s still disappointing when the news finally drops that they won’t be moving on from their current OS version. According to Motorola, there are no plans to ever bring Froyo to the Flipout and Charm, which will live out their days as Android 2.1 devices.

Source: XDA-Developers forum, Motorola

Via: Android Central 1, 2