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HTC One Google Play Edition (Unlocked)

Pros Beautiful stock Android 4.2. No bloatware, mandatory UI layers, or OS update restrictions. Gorgeous hardware. Faster than the regular HTC One.

Cons Expensive. No removable battery or memory card slot. Camera performance suffers a bit without HTC's software processing. Bottom Line HTC's beautiful and elegant One smartphone is even better running stock Android, thanks to the unlocked Google Play Edition.

By Jamie Lendino

The HTC One is a great smartphone to begin with. But as is the case with nearly all Android smartphones, even the best ones aren't guaranteed OS updates. What they are guaranteed is to have tons of bloatware preloaded, and often heavy UI layers and unnecessary additional apps that slow down the performance of the handset. The HTC One Google Play Edition ($599 direct) delivers what to many Android fans is a dream handheld: Beautiful hardware running stock Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean, without all of the above issues. For a variety of small reasons, though, it's not quite Editors' Choice-worthy; that honor goes to the Samsung Galaxy S 4 Google Play Edition.

Design, Setup, and Voice Calls
I'm not going to spend too much time on the hardware, because we've already covered it extensively in our earlier One reviews. To quickly recap: The HTC One Google Play Edition is a beautifully crafted phone, and easily on par with anything Apple has ever built. It measures 5.4 by 2.7 by 3.7 inches (HWD) and weighs five ounces. The aluminum body looks and feels great, and even the small plastic white band around the side looks good. Oversized speaker grilles at the top and bottom of the front panel hint at the phone's audio prowess.

The 4.7-inch, Gorilla Glass 2-covered, 1080p display is stunning, thanks to its incredible 468-ppi resolution. It's better than the iPhone 5's 4-inch 1136-by-640 screen, although it loses something in viewing angles and color vividness both to the iPhone 5 and the Samsung Galaxy S 4. Beneath the display is a slightly perplexing pair of Back and Home buttons, which makes popping up menus (by double-tapping the Home button) too complex.

The HTC One Google Play Edition is a dual-band LTE (700/AWS), tri-band HSPA+ 21 (850/1900/2100MHz), and quad-band EDGE (850/900/1800/1900MHz) phone with 802.11a/b/g/n/ac Wi-Fi and NFC. That means, unfortunately, it works best only with AT&T. While it will function well in T-Mobile LTE cities, it's missing the HSPA+ AWS band needed to make the most of T-Mobile's fallback network, and it won't run on Verizon or Sprint at all.

Ookla speed tests confirmed that there's no difference between the Google Play Edition and other HTC Ones with regard to data speeds. Voice calls through the earpiece sound clear, sharp, and identical to the carrier-subsidized version; unlike with the Samsung Galaxy S 4, HTC didn't do much to affect processing here. Just as before, there's a decided treble tilt to the sound of callers' voices. Transmissions through the microphone were clear, albeit with a bit more background noise than the regular model.

User Interface and Performance
Compared with the regular HTC One, the setup process was practically instantaneous. The regular HTC One forces you to jump through hurdles to set up the phone, and even tells you to go to a desktop PC to log into HTC's website and set up an account as part of the process. Here, you just join a Wi-Fi network, input your existing Google account, and boom—you're already at the home screen ready to go.

Once you're there, the phone flies. There's no perceptible lag when using the standard home screens, lock screen, and app drawers. The 'standard' HTC One looks crufty by comparison: I see an extra menu bar dividing up the home screen with buttons in weird places. App folders called Productivity and Tools bury needed programs an extra click down. Blinkfeed is fine if you like its news-feed idea, but I'd choose a different home screen immediately. The tall, thin system font is ugly, and the way HTC divided up the app drawer drives me nuts. The dial pad has small number keys, although it's smarter than stock Android's, thanks to its type-ahead features and more robust contact integration. These are all matters of taste, of course (and Sascha Segan, one of our other reviewers, disagrees with me), but I don't get the feeling HTC nailed it with Sense 5 the way some other reviewers do.

In various benchmark tests, the Google Play Edition generally turned in slightly faster performance than the regular HTC One, despite the fact that both are equipped with a quad-core 1.7GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 processor. But that's not what it seems, as I tested a subsidized HTC One running Android 4.1 Jelly Bean. With the Samsung Galaxy S 4 Google Play Edition, I saw almost exactly the same performance as the carrier-subsidized Galaxy S 4. So really, you'll see more of a performance gain upgrading to Android 4.2.2 than using a One with the carrier bloatware and HTC Sense 5 stripped away. You get 32GB of on-board storage, which is a lot, but there's no microSD card slot; some may consider that a dealbreaker.

Camera and Conclusions
One place you'll see some performance degradation from the Sens-ified version is with the camera. HTC's UltraPixel camera requires software processing to do its magic, particularly in low-light areas; otherwise it's just a 4-megapixel sensor, albeit with very large pixels. In practice, this resulted in good-but-not-great photos across the board, with smeared fine details and a general inability to compensate for lighting changes. In back-to-back comparison testing, the HTC One with Sense 5 delivered more consistent and evenly lit photos than the Google Play version, and with a bit more detail. Recorded 1080p videos played smoothly at 30 frames per second, but the lack of image stabilization and some slight overexposure issues resulted in inferior overall quality. There's also a 2.1-megapixel front-facing camera for video chats.

I really like this phone, because it's beautiful hardware and because it runs stock Android. I don't pick it up and think it's missing apps or a UI layer. I pick it up and think, look, it's just like the awesome Nexus 7 tablet, only smaller. With the Google Play Edition, you're guaranteed OS updates whenever they're first made available. You get a phone with zero bloatware from either HTC or the carrier of your choice. You get a phone that works with AT&T and (kinda) T-Mobile SIM cards here and inexpensive prepaid SIMs overseas.

The HTC One Google Play Edition is better than last year's LG-built Google Nexus 4, thanks to the HTC One's superior screen resolution, improved camera (despite its lower megapixel rating), quad-core processor, and full 4G LTE support, although the Nexus 4 remains a shrewd budget buy at half the price and performs better in T-Mobile HSPA+-only areas. Choosing between the One and the Samsung Galaxy S 4 is tougher, and is more about your priorities. The Samsung phone offers a slimmer design, a slightly larger display, a slightly faster processor, a removable battery, a better 13-megapixel camera, and a microSD card slot, all of which add up to an Editors' Choice award over this HTC One. But the Galaxy S 4 is made of plastic, lacks the HTC One's more powerful on-board speakers, and looks decidedly generic in comparison.

At its unsubsidized entry price, the HTC One Google Play Edition is guaranteed not to sell many units. Rest assured that's entirely because of the cost; if this phone were available for under $200 up front the way the regular HTC One is, you can bet a lot more people would choose it. I certainly would.

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Samsung Galaxy S 4 Google Play Edition (Unlocked)

Pros Beautiful display. Very fast performance. Runs stock Android 4.2. No carrier bloatware, non-removable Samsung apps, or OS update restrictions.

Cons Expensive. Plastic build doesn't look like $650. Some of Samsung's apps were actually useful, and they're missing here. Bottom Line The Samsung Galaxy S 4 Google Play Edition isn't really what Samsung wants you to buy, but it's the purest form of Android on a phone anywhere—and that's a great thing.

By Jamie Lendino

If you're a fan of stock Android phones, raise your hand. OK, maybe that isn't all of you, but if you're reading this review, chances are that you may be one of them—or, at least, curious as to what all the fuss is all about. The Samsung Galaxy S 4 Google Play Edition ($649), just like other versions of the phone, gives you five inches of beautiful 1080p display, a quad-core processor, a great camera, and a lightweight form factor. But unlike regular Galaxy S 4 models, this one also gives you Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean in its purest stock form—meaning without the unreliable OS update schedule, inconsistent UI, and carrier and vendor bloatware. It's a clear Editors' Choice for unlocked smartphones, even over the HTC One Google Play Edition.

Design, Setup, and Voice Calls
The Galaxy S 4 Google Play Edition looks just like any other Galaxy S 4, and on the hardware side, it works like one, too. For more details, please read our review of the T-Mobile version. In this review, I'll quickly recap what makes the Galaxy S 4 awesome, and then dive into the Google Play-specific stuff.

Much has been made of the phone's plastic build. But really, the end result is that it's lightweight and super-thin; you'll only be disappointed if you're looking for the feel of an aluminum phone, in which case the HTC One Google Play Edition is a better choice for you. The Galaxy S 4 measures 5.4 by 2.75 by 0.31 inches (HWD) and weighs 4.6 ounces. The 5-inch 1,920-by-1,080-pixel, 441-ppi Super AMOLED display is covered in Gorilla Glass 3 and looks brilliant and vivid. Beneath the display, you'll find a hardware Home button, plus capacitive Menu and Back buttons; the combination makes for easy navigation.

This is a powerful unlocked phone, with 4G LTE (700/850/AWS/1900MHz), HSPA+ 42 (850/AWS/1900/2100MHz), and quad-band EDGE (850/900/1800/1900MHz) support, and there's also 802.11a/b/g/n/ac Wi-Fi and NFC. That means it'll work perfectly on both AT&T's and T-Mobile's networks, unlike the HTC One which lacks one of T-Mobile's HSPA+ bands. I tested the Galaxy S 4 with an AT&T SIM card for this review. Repeated, back-to-back Ookla speed tests confirmed that there's no difference between the Google Play Edition and other Galaxy S 4s with regard to data speeds. 

Voice calls sounded warm and full through the earpiece; this is a great sounding phone even without Samsung's processing software. That said, this is one place where Samsung's missing custom EQ can help even more, as the carrier-subsidized version is one of the best-sounding cell phones we've ever tested. Transmissions through the microphone were clear, albeit with a bit more background noise than the regular model. This version still sounds great, though; good hardware is good hardware.

User Interface and Performance
Now about all that software. Samsung spends a tremendous amount of time talking up its endless array of software enhancements on the Galaxy S 4. Some of them are a lot of fun, while others are barely functional or even downright annoying. And all of it adds up to a cluttered, inconsistent eyesore of a UI design that's more intent on pimping the company's own media services.

All of that is gone with this version of the phone. Depending on your philosophy, that's either a great thing, or a not-a-big-deal thing. You can tell where I fall on this spectrum, but many Android smartphone owners just ignore any bloatware they don't like. Besides, you can install and run any of Google Play's 900,000 third-party apps, and install and use only the streaming media and a la carte services you prefer. You do lose access to Samsung's nifty pull-down notification bar enhancements and dual-window multitasking, but commonly accessed settings like screen brightness are just an extra tap away on the Google Play Edition.

I was wondering if benchmark results would tell a story between the two versions of the Galaxy S 4, but they actually didn't. All benchmark results were within the margin of error, with an ever-so-slight edge to the stock Android version. Samsung's software isn't slowing down the handset much on paper, it turns out, but moving around the UI, the stock handset responds more quickly and consistently. Regardless of the model, though, you'll be thrilled with the performance of the quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 processor.

Multimedia, Camera, and Conclusions
On the multimedia side, you get 16GB of internal storage (12.65GB user accessible, as compared to only 9.62GB on the Samsungged version), plus a microSD card slot that accepts 64GB cards. The battery blocks the card slot, so you'll have to pull it and reset the phone in order to swap cards, but that's the price you pay for a phone that's barely over three tenths of an inch thick, and the HTC One doesn't even have a card slot.

Camera performance doesn't suffer with the Google Play version. Test photos from the 13-megapixel sensor looked a little sharper, if slightly more pixelated; it's as if Samsung's own software was smoothing out the edges of things, at the expense of sharpness. It's a really slight difference, though. Recorded 1080p videos were smooth and crisp at 30 frames per second, just like with the carrier-subsidized Galaxy S 4. You do lose access to the regular Galaxy S 4's various photo modes, such as Dual Shot, Best Face, and Drama Shot. At least it has Google's Photo Sphere, which takes 360-degree panoramas. There's also a front-facing 2-megapixel camera for video chats.

This brings us to the price, which is usually what kills it when it comes to unlocked phones. An extra $450 up front is a hefty price to pay for what amounts to a clean stock UI and access to some future OS updates. It's not like the current carrier-subsidized Galaxy S 4s are running an old version of Android, either; they've been shipping with Android 4.2.2 since launch. So really, this is about having the stock UI, future OS updates without excruciating delays, and zero preloaded bloatware of any kind.

If you want the best possible unlocked smartphone—or if the idea of a phone-sized Nexus 7 appeals to you—the Samsung Galaxy S 4 Google Play Edition is the one to get. It takes Editors' Choice away from the Google Nexus 4, thanks to the Galaxy S 4's faster performance, larger and sharper screen, and vastly better camera. Anyone who prioritizes the look and feel of the phone hardware itself will probably like the HTC One better, thanks to its beautiful aluminum body; just know that with the HTC One, you're getting a slightly smaller screen, no microSD card slot, no removable battery, a weaker camera, and a display that is a little less bright.

As far as whether this phone is worth springing $450 for over the regular model, given the various trade-offs involved, for nearly everyone the answer is no. But I can only imagine how things would be different if they were the same price up front.

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