Was just about to post this myself (the paper directly, as Ars Technica is on my shit list). The only good news in the whole thing is that a client patch will fix it, so there's no need to rely on ISPs to fix their shit (which they may or may not actually do). Of course, the bad news is that we have to wait and hope our cell carriers let any Android patches through in something resembling a timely manner.
I think it's a combination of the two, but carriers definitely deserve a lot of the blame. As for Ars, they'd been getting increasingly snooty (reviewing increasingly expensive stuff, taking a more business-friendly slant), and they've always been Apple snobs. Basically snobs generally -- their focus is increasingly on stuff that I don't care about and certainly couldn't afford. But they really lost me when they uncritically reported that "solution" to the Voynich Manuscript when 2 minutes of digging showed that it was a press release for an upcoming book and that the author had no idea what he was talking about. It took them 2 days to post a follow-up, and longer than that to update the original article. I get that mistakes happen, but this wasn't that -- they never even looked to see if the piece was legit. (This is made even worse by the fact that one of the founders of Ars has a background in...wait for it...medieval Latin.)
I read Ars regularly and never picked up the slant you are seeing. I wonder if my perspective will change after hearing yours. Now that I think about a large portion of their device coverage I realize that they do like expensive shiny things. I'm sure that what they cover is heavily influenced by what gets clicks. Their coverage of cell phones in the $200-250 range is still excellent. I don't need a lot of phone but I want that dollar to go as far as it can, their coverage in that range is appreciated.
Their reviews can be good, but they have a tendency to bitch about something on an Android phone and then ignore the similar issue on an Apple one, for example. It's also a case of finding other sites I like better: I much prefer Techdirt and The Register at this point.