Canonical and others in the Linux community are working on making a universal kernel for ARM SoC's, and they hope it will work on most of them by 2014. That might help with upgrades and compatibility in the Android world, too, especially since they are planning to merge the Android kernel back into the main Linux kernel.

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTA0N...

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/open-source/linux-guru-re-merging-...