[T-Mobile LG G2x] JaiaV:
Just added some detail to your post.

There's also the fact that when manufacturers test devices the device pool is about 100-1000 devices on average maybe a few more, but when a device releases the testing pool all of a sudden goes up by a few orders of magnitude. Not to mention that production runs for testing devices are usually small and highly controlled while production runs for devices for sale are massive and by comparison not so highly controlled as the test runs and the time and manpower needed to properly test and fully QC every single device would be cost prohibitive and drive the production cost sky high.

Just as an example people usually say that hardware wise Apple devices are usually of much higher quality than others, but the iPhone 4 had screen yellowing (like the Mac Pro monitors before them) from a glue that was used to attach the screen to the glass (this faded over time) along with antenna issues that varied device to device. iPad 2s had variable screen bleeds that could range from barely noticeable to absolutely terrible. There was an iMac fiasco some years ago that I can't remember the details of for the life of me. Intel released a whole set of North bridge chips that had degrading SATA controllers. The HTC Evo had some screen attachment issues, from what I hear. Several PC assemblers skimp on thermal paste for CPUs and GPUs, causing overheating that can only be solved by going in and doing it yourself (which you should do anyway).

You are spot on when you say that it doesn't matter so much what the bugs are or how many there are on release so much as what the manufacturer does to resolve them.

We live in a day and age where devices are assembled from dozens or hundreds of parts made by a multitude of third party manufacturers, many of those parts consisting of millions upon millions of transistors on such a miniature scale they are constantly bumping the limit of just how many tiny little metal switches we can place so close together before they either melt themselves, each other or start having their voltages jump erratically around. These devices then get loaded with general use OS software that has to communicate to the hardware with specialized driver programs written to translate machine specific code into general use APIs that the higher level software can understand so that programmers can then write software that can run on hundreds of different variations of hardware without customizing it for every single device imaginable. There's bound to be some deviation from the norm or ideal in their somewhere. It's why Intel, AMD etc run huge production runs of chips and then reliance test them and separate them into different levels where they're performance leveled. There's a somewhat uncontrollable level of deviance in the hardware that causes inconsistencies in just how hard you can push them before they catastrophically fail. This also allows us to overclock things in the first place, because hardware is usually underclocked to extend lifetime, increase stability and efficiency, and reduce power drain.

Then again, I'm likely preaching to the choir to most people here, so I'll shut up. Hopefully I didn't put my foot in my mouth too much as I am wont to do.