Gadgetory

on May 16 2013 the first day of Google i/o Hugo Berra of Google kind of surprised the world he pulled a samsung galaxy s4 out of his pocket on a stage where you only expect to hear and even mention a Google Nexus device and not only did he hold one up and talk about it but he revealed that the one he was holding was a special one it wasn't running the typical Samsung's TouchWiz skin on top of Android at all it's gaudy animations and colors and features his Galaxy s4 was running a Google version of Android it had a nexus experience as he put it in Google's clean lines and blue hollow accents and everything this Galaxy s4 was really special he called it the Google Play edition but not only was he holding a Google Play edition galaxy s4 and not only was it a project that came together in the last week but he also announced that it would go on sale later that month in the Google Play Store and it did and an HTC One Google Play edition appeared alongside it but then there was nothing there was silence month after month of silence about the whole Google Play edition thing until last week where we got two new Google Play edition phones so we now have actually a tablet in there the LG G pad 8.3 Google Play edition and the Sony Xperia Z ultra Google Play edition so that's two new OEMs and two new screen sizes we have LG on board now and we have Sony on board now we have an eight point three inch display and a 6 point 4 inch display in the mix so after all this weight it turns out Google is continuing to work with OMS or original equipment manufacturers to continue to make these Google Play edition devices with the pure almost Nexus like experience and the really fast software updates but the question is why why does Google keep doing this and why do OMS keep working with Google to do this wouldn't these be seen as competition to the non Google Play edition versions of these phones if I was Samsung and I was spending my millions and millions of dollars on marketing and advertising for my new Galaxy s4 what sort of incentive would I ever have to work on the side project with Google on an alternate edition to sell in a different store wouldn't that sort of compete with the sales of our original goal well the truth is the Google Play edition doesn't sell like at all it has very very low sales numbers and as proof that how many iPhones do you see in the wild how many regular Galaxy s4 is do you see in the wild and then how many Google Play edition devices do you see people using out there probably almost zero if not not at all and on top of that Google Play editions get zero advertising you have not and likely never will see an advertisement for a Google Play edition device from Google or from any of the OEMs who are busy selling their standard editions and so it's become very clear that Google just does not care about the sales numbers of Google Play edition devices they're not supposed to sell millions instead consider that the Google Play edition might actually be strangely named a better name might be a the premium developer edition because these devices are perfect for developers they come with the latest version of Android and get updated very quickly so you can develop on the latest that Google has to offer and they ship with unlocked boot loaders which to put simply is way more developer-friendly fragmentation is a word that's thrown around a lot and in a couple of cases an Android app that's developed on and tested for one Android phone will literally not work with another Android phone whether that's because of a difference in screen size or resolution or SOC or graphics or any combination of those things so there's a chance a very small chance that giving developers more hardware options to develop on will make it easier to develop for more hardware options there's a chance that a developer with a Google Play edition LG G pad 8.3 will develop his app to work perfectly on that hardware the eight point three inch display the 1080p resolution the Snapdragon 600 SOC the audrina 320 GPU all that stuff in theory this would translate to a tiny advantage for LG because now there is a couple more apps in the Play Store that are going to work perfectly with the LG G pad 8.3 or at least be well compatible but that's just a theory basically don't read too much into the last part essentially it's only two more Google Play edition devices it's not a huge deal but just the fact that there are anymore Google Play edition devices means that Google hasn't forgotten about it and that Google still thinks that this is the right way to keep developers happy and that this is a good thing to continue to do to work with these OEMs and make these devices and it also happens to have the great upside that geeks like me and possibly you love using so that is the google play edition devices explained but honestly in a dream world we have every device as a Google Play edition right what would you want to see as a Google Play edition phone or tablet now there's a more realistic and then less realistic choices I think more realistic and desirable would be a Google Play edition LG g2 maybe a Google Play edition galaxy note 3 that would be nice but then those of course the far-fetched no reason to ever happen Google Play edition Lumia 1020 Google Play edition iPhone iPad whatever let me know what you guys would love to have a Google Play edition of in the comment section below bonus points if you tell me how many times I said Google Play edition in this video it's probably a lot either way that's it thank you for watching this video if you want to hit that thumbs up button below that would be awesome but more importantly there's a subscribe button if you want to see more videos like this on a regular basis thank you for watching and I will talk to you guys in the next one peace you