Google Edition announcement made my cousin furious

[omniusovermind]

After I told him over and over "wait for the next Nexus phone!" my cousin turned a deaf ear to me and locked himself into a contract for the S4 the same day it launched. I just got home from a day trip and read this news and called him. Needless to say he's completely pissed off at Samsung right now. Can't say I blame him, but at least I refrained from giving him an aneurism(sp?) by throwing the old "I told ya so" line at him
I wish I could've consoled him with an AOSP ROM alternative, but sadly that solution won't get him immediate updates like the GE will.

I'm thinking I might not want to tell him that this phone will probably end up being available for subsidized purchase on carriers like the N4 did because he'll really lose his s**t then.

 

[Aquila]

After I told him over and over "wait for the next Nexus phone!" my cousin turned a deaf ear to me and locked himself into a contract for the S4 the same day it launched. I just got home from a day trip and read this news and called him. Needless to say he's completely pissed off at Samsung right now. Can't say I blame him, but at least I refrained from giving him an aneurism(sp?) by throwing the old "I told ya so" line at him
I wish I could've consoled him with an AOSP ROM alternative, but sadly that solution won't get him immediate updates like the GE will.

I'm thinking I might not want to tell him that this phone will probably end up being available for subsidized purchase on carriers like the N4 did because he'll really lose his s**t then.

He's actually got the better deal. He'll have a phone that can run TouchWiz or TouchWiz with Nova Launcher or whatever AND can have AOSP flashed if he wants to play with it. Going the other directly will likely be difficult. If he truly wanted an AOSP phone, waiting or buying the Nexus 4 would have been much much much much much smarter. People should listen to nerds about gadgets. The great news, is that with as popular as the S4 is, it'll likely have a very popular development community and the one good thing about the GE S4 is that when it gets updates, developers should be able to port it over to new AOSP ROMs for the carrier S4's. If these two and the Nexus 4 were the only 3 phones in the world, then for people who want the Google experience, the Nexus 4 is by far the best, then carrier S4 then GE S4.

 

[Dreamliner330]

^While I understand your logic about a carrier S4 being more 'capable' because of its TouchWiz capabilities, I'd argue the NE S4 is by far the best choice when choosing a smartphone, followed by the S4. While a carrier S4 is (hopefully) likely to get a NE S4 port, you're still at the mercy of developers. TouchWiz is far from being optimized and bug/lag free...

NE S4 > *

AOSP > *

Onscreen buttons suck...

Either way, I'll wait for a NE S4 port then probably pickup a Verizon S4...