Earlier today, Samsung posted two versions of its Developer Edition Galaxy S4 to its Mobile portal, one for AT&T and another version for Verizon.
However, outside of confirmation of a single developer edition announced by Google earlier this month at Google I/O due to go on sale in two months, the manufacturer had not confirmed any additional variants of the model. The Developer Edition as detailed by Google and being sold through its Nexus sales portal will feature an unlocked bootloader as well as stock Jelly Bean, albeit unlike the Nexus device line, it will not be subsidized by Google or Samsung, with a $649 pricetag.
With the appearance of additional Developer Edition models for both Verizon and AT&T, this has led many to assume that both carriers will also carry their own variants of the same Developer Edition, though as of this posting Samsung has yet to return our requests for comment, being caught completely off guard by the listings. Until we get confirmation, it’s best to assume that the listings were mistakenly added by a developer for their web portal until confirmed otherwise.
However, should the listings pan out (and previous history has shown that such listings have been confirmed after a few days), this would mark a further change in carrier policies regarding Android devices with unlocked bootloaders, as AT&T is also expected to carry a developer version of the HTC One in the future, while Verizon has been typically loathe to support any sort of developer initiative directly, preferring to quietly release devices with locked bootloaders and usually putting off community developer support in favor of general consumer needs.
What has yet to be confirmed is whether the AT&T and Verizon variants will support either Samsung’s TouchWiz overlay or if they’ll ship identically to Google’s forthcoming edition with stock Jelly Bean. As of now we have no word either way and past events have proven that AT&T and Verizon may choose to ship the phones with TouchWiz, while Google may offer the alternative stock Android experience as a separate download, though the odds of such a scenario happening is extremely rare. For now, we at least have the possibility of such a release on two carriers without the implied exclusivity of the Google offering.
