Regarding Samsung releasing their devices with the latest software, have you guys tried TouchWiz? Seriously.. I had a Galaxy S3 for a long time and I tried the S4 more than once and I can safely say I'd use HTC Sense over it ANY DAY, even if it ran Ice Cream Sandwich. It is not only more stable and much quicker, but it's much more responsive and I have never ever experienced any kind of lag using it whereas I had to reboot my S3 several times a week just to get it to function properly. Have you tried using the S3 or S4 with Power Saver Mode ON? On the S3 it was useless and on the S4 it is NOTHING compared to power saver mode on the HTC which you wouldn't feel a different with it activated because Sense is the snappiest UI in the market at the moment, except for of course stock or Google Edition Android because they are not bloated with software (and being bloated is not necessary a bad thing because you get a lot of extras).
The One with 1.28 or 1.29 is still an amazing device to use and performs much better than most other devices in the market with newer softwares. The problem with 1.28 was the responsiveness of the touchscreen and the capacitive buttons if you have a thick screen protector on like the anti-finger/anti-glare one I have, but with 1.29 it was all fixed. 2.24 adds a lot of nice features but the device is as usable with 1.28 and 1.29 as any, so please let us stop complaining about this.