I’ve been using a Google Nexus 5 for the last 5 years, and it’s still working pretty well. I had to change the battery twice, though, but it’s a 12.5€ cost each time… so 5€ per year, not a big deal.

Sadly Google is still (up to 2018) having a 2 years OS upgrade policy, and there is no way to extend it even by paying, which leads to the strange situation of having a perfectly fine hardware powered by a great open-source OS, which receives less attention than free apps running on top of that OS, apps which freely upgrade forever. Weird.

I hope that Google will correct that and will offer a more realistic upgrade length of 5 years, or split the OS in a way that the hardware layer is decoupled with the Android version layer (the app framework), so that smartphone makers can deploy hardware security patchs without waiting for Android to upgrade, and that Android can receive version upgrades without interaction with smartphone makers. That would be a bliss!

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[Edit] And at 6 years and a ½ it finally died a few days ago, after being used during all that time roughly 6–8 hours a day every day, and taking about 100 to 200 pictures a day. A pretty good phone! Now, will I wait for the Pixel 4a or the Pixel 5 to purchase a new phone, that’s the question