I am sure you can still get OTA update but it will be for the firmware you flash to.
This would be my guess. Depending on the image you flash, you have certain update settings. Internally on proto stuff we do special things after flash. For retail, it's all baked into the image. However, it's still a very risky thing to do, because there might be minor differences between hardware that might do some bad things. Say, if Verizon had a 920, I definitely would not flash a unlocked version from the Europe interwebs because there might be some funky stuff that nokia does for cdma in USA rather than in Europe where a euro image might brick the device.
Luckily
, the cdma variants seem to be completely different, and most similar models are numbered differently. The apocalyptic scenario described above
shouldn't happen, but I'd be afraid of bricking my expensive phone. Now, euro phones all seem to be the same--carrier locked or unlocked.
Waiting for updates suck, because carriers will go through a lengthy testing process for even smaller feature updates. Bug fixes seem to go through without testing (like Certificate revocation stuff if one of our trusted CAs gets hacked), but the GDRs contain changes that require a lot more testing by US carriers. Apple's done a great job of announcing things/products a week or two before release that I think MS is trying to move towards. Don't announce it as it goes into testing, announce it a week or two before its done carrier testing. With Windows, MS never hits that--they can just release the product once it goes RTM. RTM in mobile means you still have to wait a while. I don't know what happened to that early adopter program--and wish that it became prominent. A lot of the more involved WP users should be allowed to risk their data and reflashing for the new updates, especially after the big kernel change to 8.
