Thoughts on the Rumored Xperia Z Google Edition and Google Edition phones in general

[JRDroid]

The Xperia Z is the first ?Google Edition? that would make me excited. I didn?t really like the SGS4?s hardware or software, GE fixes the software, but you are still stuck with cheap feeling hardware, some of which becomes non-functional due to missing the TouchWiz framework. HTC One has excellent hardware and very good software. The problem here is that the hardware very heavily rely?s on the software to be as good as it is, and in the GE you lose that HTC magic sauce that makes its camera and speakers so amazing. The Xperia Z is, I believe, the Goldilocks Google Edition phone. It has amazing hardware that can stand mostly on its own separate from Sony?s meh software, and becomes an amazing phone once you slap pure Android on it. Even Sony recognized this and released stock ROMs for it. Add in updates straight from Google, amazing.

I wouldn't buy either the Google or standard SGS4 or the HTC One GE (I love me a Sense sporting HTC One), but the Xperia Z is a phone I would buy the GE of that I wouldn't have bought the standard version of. Heck, I'd even consider buying it to replace my HTC One, depending on its price. If it is in the $500-$550 range, I may just sell my One and buy this.

 

[Rule9]

Even as a nexus user I'm not a fan of these GE phones for the simple reason that these phones were specifically designed to take advantage of the OEM skins they ship with. For example, if you remove Sense camera software all you're left with is just a 4mp camera.
Nexus phones OTOH don't contain any hardware that requires enhancement from a manufacturer skin to work better. And to be honest, after reading what HTC has in store for the One's 4.2 update, I'm more impressed by it than their GE version.

 

[jonathan2677]

Yep,won't give up my one but def will be buying a sony

Sent from my HTC One using Tapatalk 2

 

[JRDroid]

Even as a nexus user I'm not a fan of these GE phones for the simple reason that these phones were specifically designed to take advantage of the OEM skins they ship with. For example, if you remove Sense camera software all you're left with is just a 4mp camera.
Nexus phones OTOH don't contain any hardware that requires enhancement from a manufacturer skin to work better. And to be honest, after reading what HTC has in store for the One's 4.2 update, I'm more impressed by it than their GE version.

Thats only true to a degree though. The Nexus 4 is more or less a tweaked Optimus G. From what I have read/seen, the Optimus G takes better pictures than the Nexus One, and I would assume that this is due to some sort of LG software. Also look back the the GSII and the Galaxy Nexus. The Galaxy Nexus was a regiggered Galaxy S II for the most part, but it took much worse pictures than the GSII, which was regarded to have a pretty decent camera for the time. So while I agree that Nexus devices won't have things like a barometer or thermometer or pedometer that the software won't use, they have thus far had the same camera modules that their original incarnation had, which usually benefited greatly from OEM software enhancements.