When Samsung announced the Galaxy S5, we weren’t sure if we’d be seeing a Google Play Edition of the device. But when HTC announced their new flagship the One M8, the Google Play Edition version was available the same day. But it appears as if the Galaxy S5 Google Play Edition is launching any minute now. Some of Droid Life’s readers noticed that Google changed the picture on the Google Play Edition page of the Google Play Store for the Galaxy S4 listing. It’s actually a Galaxy S5 there. However on the actual product page, all the pictures are the same. So we’re assuming that it’s going live pretty soon. The Galaxy S4 Google Play Edition is still going for $650 though, so it’s kinda pricey, especially for a year old device. The Samsung Galaxy S5 Google Play Edition is likely to be the same price as well.
The Google Play Edition is basically the same as the regular Galaxy S5, except it will run stock Android. So it’s almost like a Nexus, except not really. As we saw with the HTC One M8 GPe, a lot of it’s features became available in the Google Play Store which means that the Google Play Edition was still able to utilize a lot of the features for the camera and even the Dot View case, which a lot of people have a love/hate relationship with. We’ll likely see the same thing with the Galaxy S5. So the Fingerprint sensor will probably still work, and the heart rate monitor should already work with a bunch of other apps like Runtastic. So that shouldn’t be a big deal either.
Are any of our readers interested in picking up a Samsung Galaxy S5 Google Play Edition when it launches on Google Play? Or would you rather have the Touchwiz version of the Galaxy S5? Be sure to let us know in the comments down below.