Used my Essential today to snap gorgeous 360 pics with the snap-on camera. I think they had a good approach that could've lead to building a good ecosystem.
Not sure what I'll upgrade to after carrying the Essential...
Why upgrade to anything else, until your Essential breaks?
Drive it like you stole it.. and there's always LineageOS[0], so you can keep updating it basically forever, and since it was a flagship, the specs are still pretty solid, even compared to mid-tier phones.
It's pretty hard to find a phone that has the stock Android experience, no bloatware, and beautiful, powerful hardware for this kind of price ($150 on Ebay for grade-A used), let alone one that has an awesome 360 camera and can run nightly android builds.
The problem is that stock Android on Essential will no longer receive security updates. LineageOS will receive updates, but if you want to use things like Google Pay or Netflix, you'll have to install kernel mods to trick SafetyNet into thinking that it's not running LineageOS.
I'm almost OK with doing that, but I think it's a tall order my partner (non-technical) who has been using an Essential.
