Samsung's insanely popular Galaxy S4 is already on the market, but yesterday at Google I/O it was announced that the 'Google Edition' of the Galaxy S4 would come to America running stock Android!
This phone will feature an unlocked bootloader, 16GB of internal storage as well as that SD card slot and there's LTE on board which Google say will work with T-Mobile and AT&T in the US. Otherwise though this is the same Galaxy S4 we know and love and you can see a full run down of the specs list here!
The particularly interesting thing about this phone is that Google have promised that it will receive 'prompt updates' with every new version of Android. The phone also is totally unlocked and that means that it is essentially a Nexus device. So far people seem to have been quite baffled by this device and why Google are even thinking about selling it. As far as we are concerned though this makes perfect sense.
The way we think of it is as a device which helps manufacturers get software updates out faster. This is something which Google have been saying that they want to try to work on lately and if they have a quasi-Nexus device which they can push out stock Android to nice and quickly then your Samsung's, HTC's and whoever else makes a device with a Snapdragon 600 inside only need to re-skin the OS with their enhancements and then the software is ready to be released and theoretically this will make updates much quicker!
If you're interested in one of these Nexus Galaxy S4's then you'll be able to get one on June the 26th if you live in the USA and you can order direct from Google Play. The device will set you back a lot more than the Nexus 4, but Samsung will obviously want to maintain their margins, so you'll be paying $649! At the moment there's no word on if or when this will come to Europe or Asia, we think it's likely, but we'll have to wait and see!
