Last month at Google I/O and D11, the Android team announced the Galaxy S4 Google Edition and HTC One Google Edition respectively. It’s basically the same HTC One or Galaxy S4 you’d grab from your carrier, but without Sense 5 and Touchwiz. Instead it’s running on stock Android, or Pure Google! This is a huge deal. For years we have been complaining about companies not offering stock Android devices. Now we have two flagship devices running Stock Android, even if they are on AT&T and T-Mobile only. So if you want Google Edition phones to continue, we’re going to need you to vote with your wallet.
Both devices are available from Google Play starting today. They have the same specs as the regular Sense 5 and Touchwiz-based devices, but they don’t have a lot of the features that HTC and Samsung touted when they announced their flagships. The HTC One is $599, and the Galaxy S4 is $649. Now for those complaining about the price, it’s the same price as an unlocked HTC One or Galaxy S4 with Touchwiz or Sense 5. We all expected Google to go ahead and drop the price to around $400-450 for these devices, but we were quite surprised when the Galaxy S4 was announced for $649 back at Google I/O.
Hopefully Google won’t have the same problems with Google Play as they did during the Nexus 4/10 and Nexus 7 launch. If any of you ordered a Nexus on launch day, you know exactly what I’m talking about. With all of the server errors, and items disappearing from your cart, etc. I don’t think Google will run out, I doubt they’ll sell many of these, given the price.
So how many of you are going to hope on over to Google Play and purchase a Google Edition HTC One or Samsung Galaxy S4? Let us know in the comments down below how you like it and which one you ordered.
Samsung Galaxy S4 Google Edition
HTC One Google Edition