I'm going to buy a Sony Xperia phone, likely the Japanese GX when it goes international, but I'm actually quite satisfied that this phone has gotten as far as running ICS, albeit without camera previews. I'll probably set it up on GB before I give it away, but from my perspective the lesson to be learned here is don't buy carrier phones, even the prepaid ones.
In this case, the better route would have been to buy a p500 unlocked and a gophone sim card off Amazon, if you don't mind foregoing the 1-year warranty that comes with the Thrive. It's ridiculous that any hardware modifications (besides frequencies) have to be made to the original Optimus One at all. The phone doesn't get enough attention for carriers to benefit from giving it a unique name, and it probably would be cheaper for the carriers to use the original Optimus One anyway, which could make them less desperate for money for services like the AT&T Navigation app. (I can understand if it exists for feature phones but they went through the trouble to write one for an OS that comes with Google Maps Navigation preinstalled?)