Almost everyone lusting for more "manual shifting" is missing the point of why companies do what they do. Companies don't design phones for the 1% that want to muck around in the internals. They design them for the vast majority. And looking at iPhone's reputation for "It just works....." it's hard to argue that philosophy. Despite costing significantly more than equivalent Android device, and being monosourced, they have almost as much market share as Android.
Android is like Linux. I've putzed with Linux off and on for over a dozen years. I've tried almost every distro out there. But they all suffer from one great fatal flaw: Lack of consistency. Everyone gets in the guts and writes code to make it "better." In their opinion. Similarly, every HTC, Samsung, etc. writes up new code and pushes it out of the door regardless of bugs and stupidities. "Cuz they know better. I don't have a lot of Android experience, one HTC Cyanogen'ed and a number of friends, but it seems that complaints are legendary, like battery life, across time and hardware.
If WP is going to gain more market share, it won't be because they have opened up the code. It will be because the phone's reputation will be similar to the iPhone: "It just works......" (Admittedly, a lot of catching up to do, and there are things that frustrate me, but my 810 experience is the best touchscreen one I've had. YMMV)