Today we see a rumour emerging that it might not just be Samsung that’s doing an AOSP version of its 2013 flagship, with HTC rumoured to be working on a similarly AOSP-powered version of its One handset.
Apparently this rumour kicked off last week when an HTC Rep hinted at the possibility of a stock Android AOSP version of the the HTC One, similar to the Samsung Galaxy S4 Google Edition announced at Google I/O. Very quickly, however, HTC put the kibosh on this rumour with HTC’s Jeff Gordon denying the rumours completely.
Today, there are more rumours to stoke the fire, with Twitter user @LlabTooFeR speculating that such a device from HTC could launch as soon as “this summer” (which means Winter for us Australians).
It means that this summer we will see HTC One Google Edition or something like that…
— LlabTooFeR (@LlabTooFeR) May 17, 2013
Make of this what you will — this is not an official announcement, it is not a rumour generated from within HTC, it’s just a tweet from a guy on Twitter who has, mind you, been fairly accurate in the past with things like this. That accuracy in the past aside, HTC have officially ruled this out, so it’s even money at the moment.
We’d certainly like to see this trend of manufacturers releasing an AOSP variant of their big sellers, and while they might not be as popular as their mainstream devices (remember that HTC and Samsung customise their phones not to irritate us power-users, but to make them more accessible to the masses), they’ll undoubtedly sell well to the power-users that love AOSP.
Thoughts? Share ’em!
