Eh, sense has a battery indicator, what are you talking about? And I don't even have 4.3.
And there's no android 5 on the horizon... You're waiting for 4.4.
At the moment it's the other way around. HTC is providing relatively fast updates and Samsung is lagging behind. Popularity means nothing to Samsung, just look what they do with 4.3 and the S3. December, seriously? ;-)
That's something I really don't get in america. Your updates really depend on your carrier? What's the reason behind this? In germany you usually get something like an unlocked phone and the updates come from the manufacturer like it's really your phone.
Maybe because the system with subsidized...
HTC One, best build quality and a nice UI (sense is great and far from being that joke called touchwiz), and you still got the possibility to root it and go with stock android.