We were late to the SMS game in the US as well, most European countries saw mass SMS adoption back in the late 90s and early 2000s, whereas it didn’t catch on in the same way till about 2005 or 2006 here. I still remember the days of being limited to 400 texts a month, and having certain friends growing up who I couldn’t text because their parents would not get a plan that had any buckets of them.
Hell, I dealt with that all the way back in 2010/2011 with the Cliq XT. It was supposed to get Android 1.6, and Moto kept stringing everyone along until after Android 2.0 came out, when they quietly stopped saying an update would come. Worst part is, IIRC the Cliq (same exact phone hardware wise, except with a physical keyboard) received the promised update.
Ever since then, I’ve sworn off Moto aside from the Z2 Force which I managed to get new for like $250, and even that one became my rooted plaything until the charging port fried itself last year.
Moto, aside from the brief time they were part of Google, has always been awful about software updates, unfortunately.