I just recently rooted and am just curious and could be completely wrong... Doesn't Unrevoked Forever solve the not being able to get an OTA problem since you would remain rooted even if you accept an OTA update? If this is true, has anyone tried it and does it actually work? I was thinking about getting UNrevoked Forever just for this reason...
That was the claim when Unrevoked Forever first came out. But rooting is a cat and mouse game, and sometimes the cat wins, at least for awhile (ie, newer Moto phones are still a pain; you can get a ROM on them but still can't touch the kernel).
Bottom line: I don't have actual stats and facts to support this, but with the help of this forum and XDA, I've rooted several phones for myself and others. Going back to a few Heros, an Eris, an OG Droid, two or three Incs, a couple of Vibrants, and more than a few Evos, in researching various phone specific forums and threads for tips and procedures, I can't think of a single anecdotal instance of someone taking an OTA on a rooted phone without losing root, or worse. I'm pretty certain I've never read a post that said or implied, "Hey guess what! I took the OTA, my phone is still rooted, and better than ever." Most of the time, the devs bail them out, eventually. But why should they even have to? To be blunt, it's a simple concept. If you've rooted your phone, you've already demonstrated that you can follow a series of simple, methodical steps. Just add one more step:
Step [last]. If you enjoy and value the added advantages, abilities, and freedoms to enhance and customize your phone to your own needs and preferences, then from here on in, never accept an OTA. Instead, just wait for the rooted version and all the variants that will inevitably arrive shortly thereafter (if not before).
Maybe (hopefully) that will change with HTC revisiting their bootloader policy. For now, if you take an OTA, don't get mad at Sprint or HTC for killing your root. By accepting an OTA, you are most likely throwing your root away, or possibly worse consequences, and have no one to blame but yourself.