As others, I have a nexus 5 , easy to root and supported by 3rd party roms, currently running 7.1.1 but got notification the other day that 7.1.2 is available from the repo, so thats faster than my carrier releases updates for their newer phones. Put a new battery in the other week as it had gone bad with age too, remember the howls about non replaceable battery? its trivial to do.
I'm also one of those oddballs that like the Qi charging as on my other devices these seem to wear out, but as I only hook the nexus up to use with ADB its good still. In fact if I spot another at reasonable price I'll probably buy it to put sailfish or another os on to experiment with as its easy to do.
No updates from google != landfill the phone, nor require mass migration to overpriced fruity things.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
