{"id":19644,"date":"2013-05-21T12:30:58","date_gmt":"2013-05-21T17:30:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/techcitement.com\/?p=19644"},"modified":"2013-05-21T10:44:30","modified_gmt":"2013-05-21T15:44:30","slug":"why-the-galaxy-s4-google-edition-is-an-awesome-thing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/hardware\/why-the-galaxy-s4-google-edition-is-an-awesome-thing\/","title":{"rendered":"Why The Galaxy S4 Google Edition Is An Awesome Thing"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Google threw a little surprise at the end of last week&#8217;s Google I\/O event: The search giant has teamed with Samsung to produce a &#8220;Google Edition&#8221; of the insanely popular <a href=\"http:\/\/www.samsung.com\/global\/microsite\/galaxys4\/\" target=\"_blank\">Samsung Galaxy S4<\/a> (stay tuned for our review). Due out June 26 in the United States, the handset will feature Android in all it&#8217;s naked glory.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/VkVy2FeqIyc\" height=\"323\" width=\"575\" allowfullscreen=\"\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>At last, you can use Samsung&#8217;s kick-butt hardware without dealing with TouchWiz\/NatureUI, the Samsung skin that bastardizes\u00a0Android. TouchWiz has its roots in Windows Mobile (as does HTC&#8217;s Sense solution), an operating system that\u00a0desperately\u00a0needed a helping hand interface-wise. Android, however, has arguably not needed one since well before version 4.x. For now, TouchWiz and other such solutions serve as the fence around the hardware maker&#8217;s handsets, a way to keep you from a pure Android experience and make sure you know that this is a Samsung\/HTC\/Sony device. Oh, and thee skins also serve as a hurdle to getting timely OS updates.<\/p>\n<p>The S4 Google Edition will be a premium device, priced at $649. People used to subsidized phones may balk, but for those willing to pay a premium, that&#8217;s not terrible. More importantly, this phone means that someone is destined to release a pure Android ROM for existing S4 units.<\/p>\n<p>Rumor has it that <a href=\"http:\/\/crave.cnet.co.uk\/mobiles\/htc-one-could-join-googles-galaxy-s4-with-stock-android-50011277\/\" target=\"_blank\">HTC is considering<\/a> doing something similar for the HTC One. With the Google-owned Motorola going pure Android soon, it&#8217;s possible we may be seeing the start of something wonderful.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Google threw a little surprise at the end of last week&#8217;s Google I\/O event: The search giant has teamed with Samsung to produce a &#8220;Google Edition&#8221; of the insanely popular Samsung Galaxy S4 (stay tuned for our review). Due out June 26 in the United States, the handset will feature Android in all it&#8217;s naked [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":19655,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31,1917],"tags":[34,3,297,4757,6,4370,4787,4481,61,1540,4275,4790,2746,2046,1541],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19644"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19644"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19644\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19659,"href":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19644\/revisions\/19659"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19655"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19644"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19644"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techcitement.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19644"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}