[Asus  Eee Pad Transformer Prime] CharliesTheMan:
In most people's opinions who are big into Android, custom roms on every device work better. It's for a variety of reasons. One really big reason is because as developers and custom android enthusiasts we can take risks. As a developer, we can customize a really nice rom, build to suit the needs of most of our users. It's always a give and take. You can bump up clock speeds, tweak frequencies, etc. Our users want performance, so we take some from the battery life category and give to the performance category. Or maybe we are building a slim rom with amazing battery life that doesn't have nearly as much eye candy and has auto sync settings modified, etc.

Asus doesn't have that ability. They have to build one piece of software that does everything pretty good and not much perfect. They can't release an update, and three days later release another update, and then another. Most people who buy an Android device aren't custom rom enthusiasts and don't give a darn what version of Android they are running as long as it's working like they want it too.

So Asus has to do months of testing, and tweaking, and testing more before they release something. And then that one something has to try to satisfy their entire population of users. So a manufacturer can't take the same risks that developers take all the time, because they have way more on the line and are catering to a buyer group that is largely going to run bone stock and doesn't know what a rom or kernel is, and may get really mad if they have better performance and a faster loading browser but their screen goes black for a second when they rotate orientation. Or if the lock/unlock button doesn't work, they will write nasty reviews about how their update just to make a browser that worked before work a little better, took away features that they had before.

With us, one screwup, even a big one, can cause us to need to update the rom version and add a few lines to the change log. With a company like asus, it can cost them millions in warranty claims and RMA's. Personally, I'm with you. Asus should slap a wookie rom on the prime and HTC should throw a bamf rom on their phones from the start, and we would have MUCH better phones, and updates ready the day they're legally allowed to go public. But their's a lot more at stake when you have to worry about bottom lines, warranties, R&D, quality control, etc.

Then their is also sales and marketing that effect things. Lets say a company like Asus has a tablet like the prime. And they have the new tfp 800 set to go on sale with Jelly Bean and because of technology and cost limitations, it has slightly better battery life and a better screen than the prime, and other than that it's almost the same tablet. But, they've been advertising the tfp 800 as the first 10 inch quad core Official Jelly Bean tablet. The developers may have already finished the beta testing on the prime, but if they release jelly bean on the prime, 6 weeks before the big TFP 800, then they will make a bunch of their prime customers happy and realize there's not much difference. But if they weight two months to drop jelly bean, they will have a lot of prime owners that have heard all the great jelly bean hype and don't want to wait that will go out and buy the TFP 800 plus all these new potential customers that want jelly bean on a 10 inch tablet when it launches and so they are required to buy the new tfp800 from asus, where if they would have released a jelly bean update and fixed all the issues on the prime before the 800 launched, a lot of their potential customers would just buy a secondhand prime that had the jellybean update, or decided it wasn't a big deal since the prime had it a few months ago and not make that impulse buy, etc.