[Essential Phone Questions & Answers] JayLosh:
I considered posting on the main question thread, but I am requesting a comprehensive response and therefore feel a standalone post was warranted.

I am on my third PH-1 and am now scared of touching it. I need your help.

Here is my background: I received my first PH-1 in October 2018; I used it stock with a Verizon sim card and had no intention of rooting it or doing anything custom. A nice solid phone. Then, at the start of November, it rebooted and the digitizer froze out of nowhere. I knew that it had recently ran a System Update to Pie that had been prompted (apparently an OTA update). I got it to unfreeze via Safe Mode. Then it soon rebooted again out of nowhere and the digitizer froze a second time; completely unresponsive. I did another couple reboots and it unfroze, then froze a third and final time that evening. I thought it was my fault; that some app I loaded from the store killed the phone. I contacted essential support; I erased the phone via the factory reset, but the digitizer did not respond. Essential warranty replaced the phone.

I received my second phone at the end of November. I did not check what version or anything and like a good user, I ran the prompted System Update (to Pie) and reduced the number of apps I installed to the bare minimum. At the end of that week, the digitizer on this new second phone ceased working immediately after a reboot. I got it to come back two more times (again), but it eventually froze just like the first one. Essential support explained that this may be due to not having the correct kernel updated on my phone prior to accepting the OTA update. Essential warranty replaced the second phone.

I now hold in my hands the third Essential phone.

It is 7.1.1, Kernel 4.4.21-perf+

System Update keeps prompting me to download and install PPR1.181005.099

I am technically proficient, however am new to rooting and updating Essential phone firmware.

As I understand it, I need to get to the latest kernel version before I can update the Android version, as updating to the latest Android would again disable the digitizer.

How do I do that?

I have done the following so far:

Read through this guide: https://mata.readthedocs.io/en/latest/

Read through this firmware dump post: https://xdaforums.com/essential-phone/development/stock-7-1-1-nmj20d-t3701681

Own a Windows 10 machine

Purchased a non-stock USB C cable - Monoprice Essentials USB Type C to USB-A 2.0 Cable - 480Mbps, 3A, 26AWG, Black, 0.5m (1.6ft) #27932 https://www.monoprice.com/product?p_id=27932

Installed Essential-PH1-WindowsDrivers.exe

Unpacked platform-tools_r28.0.1-windows.zip

Charged my phone

Activated developer options

Enabled OEM Unlocking

Disabled automatic updates (system and apps)

I am completely lost as to what my next step(s) need to be and I truly would appreciate being walked through this. At worst, I just want to disable the prompt to run a System Update and then survive like a Neanderthal on Nougat.

Can someone please help. Thank you.

Of note, I actually fear for new, non technical, PH-1 owners who, upon receiving phones during the window I also received mine, have had their digitizers fail. So far, I feel alone as the only one with this problem.