Those of you salivating over the announcement of a “Google Edition” of the venerable Samsung Galaxy S 4 need not be worried that you won’t be able to buy this beast in Australia. While there’s been no official announcement of the Galaxy S 4 Google Edition in Australia — yet — we have heard from MobiCity that they will be sourcing this particular model and will have it available for purchase in Australia soon after its availability overseas.
Expected to become available in the US on 26 June for $649, our American friends will be able to use this device on either the AT&T or T-Mobile networks, meaning that such a handset is likely to work on the major network frequencies used in Australia as well.
We don’t have any word on pricing through MobiCity at this rate, though history suggests that there’ll be a little bit of a premium on the pricing to account for the cost of getting the device from the US to Australia. Those of you who might already have a Galaxy S 4, but are interested in an AOSP experience, will probably be waiting for end of June for the ROM to be released, because in all likelihood, the ROM for the Google Edition Galaxy S 4 will work on our existing handsets with just a little bit of work.
Big deal. Still won’t support our LTE. Just import it directly and save yourself the $200 premium.
Venerable – “i do not think that word means what you think it means”
Oh I think it means exactly what it does mean, but thanks 🙂
I have a hard time believing this will even work ‘properly’ on our 3G, let alone our LTE.
Since it has LTE support for AT&T and T-Mobile, I’m assuming hardware wise, it’s the SGH-I337. If that is the case, it’ll lack HSPA+/UMTS 3G support for 900 MHz so less support for Optus outside of metro areas and the only LTE bands supported would be Bands 1/4/7/17 which for now, would also mean a lack of 4G here in Aussie since primarily band 3 (1800 MHz) is used.
LTE: Bands 1/4/7/17; HSPA+/UMTS: 850/1900/2100MHz; GSM: 850/900/1800/1900MHz
http://www.samsung.com/us/mobile/cell-phones/SGH-I337ZWAATT-specs
A good point and I’ll update to note this.
I don’t think the frequencies it will run on have been revealed yet. The FCC in the US performed some test on their local frequencies, but they wouldn’t test AU bands as they are not part of their scope.
AFAIK any bands not tested in the USA won’t be enabled even if there’s hardware support.
I doubt that .. Where did you read that?
They’d create more work (have to write / test new code), to limit functionality and also prevent global roaming?
Why would new code have to written if it was never enabled in the first place? And american carriers want it so people are forced to stay on their networks.
All the network bands on the phone have to be licensed and tested by the FCC.
They would reuse the same stack they’ve used already. Hence work is required to modify this stack to restrict it.
Furthermore this device is not being sold by the carrier but by Google themselves thus the carrier has little to no say in restricting it’s frequencies.
Trust mobicity to do the right thing 🙂
I agree, i thought it didn’t support Aussie 4g?
Is this the Octa-Core version?
Specs haven’t been revealed. I’d assume it’s the Snapdragon 600. Which will absolutely fly on AOSP.
the current s4 supports aussie 4g…
Does this mean the device will work on our 4g networks?
Also i’m not so sure how quick I am to believe it will be a simple rom port.. Remember the original galaxy s / nexus s… very similar hw, but the developers always had issues porting the nexus rom over perfectly….