Not sure why anyone would bother spending their time reading and posting on forums dedicated to android development just to say "Trash google move to apple". Not even sure if you're trolling or serious because of how ridiculous that seems but hey, whatever floats your boat.
I agree that the N7 (1st gen at least) has some hardware issues (poor life of NAND device and cheap, easy to break/bend usb port to name a few). But the act of rooting or flashing custom roms should have absolutely nothing to do with "killing the device," unless some user error is also to blame, such as flashing to the wrong partition, flashing incompatible roms, extreme overclocking of the CPU, or attempting to make any other modifications that are not compatible with the device. (of course there is always a risk in making modifications, but that's just part of the fun, and should be known before taking on these type of activities)
It's possible that the constant flashing of new ROMS to the device (and therefore frequently writing a lot of data to the chip at once which would not occur otherwise) could make the NAND chip expire faster. But typically the use of a custom ROM in and of itself is not going to be the cause of hardware failing (rooting as well has absolutely nothing to do with your hardware failing, assuming it's done correctly), as long as the ROM is compatible with the device.
If you've killed 3 devices within a warranty period, i'd say that's mainly just terrible luck (assuming some amount of user error is not also to blame
). I've had my N7 for around 2 years now, rooted and modified since day 1, and frequently flash new roms, and it's still going strong, same for my wife's N7.
Sorry for off topic, but I just couldn't help myself.
