Put this one firmly in the rumour catgeory folks, but according to Geek.com Samsung and Google have gotten together and are planning to release a Galaxy S4 running an AOSP version of Android, which will be launched during the keynote at IO, due to start at 2am tomorrow morning Australian Eastern time.
The rumour states that the special edition phone has been collaborated on by Samsung and Google, in order to address the growing number of users looking for the ‘stock’ Android experience on something other than a Nexus device. Something that the ROM community has been achieving through more un-official means via Cyanogen Mod, AOKP or other AOSP based ROMs in the last few years.
The Google Edition Galaxy S4 will apparently be made available starting in June using T-Mobile Bands, although whether this would be 3G or 4G LTE bands was not made clear. Pricing and other information regarding what radio bands would be available has not been supplied.
The existence of this rumour raises questions, a lot of questions : Soft vs Capacative buttons(and physical Home key), using the microSD Card slot, Google Apps and things such as the IR Port on top of the device and I’m sure there are more. I’m sure that Google and Samsung can hash out a lot of the answers to these questions and if it is indeed true then Galaxy S4 owners the world over will be glad to see the ROM ripped from the device mere minutes to hours after it is in developers hands.
Would you be interested in a Samsung Galaxy S4 running ‘Stock’ Android?
