There's some good news this morning for folks that love to tinker with their Android phones, as HTC has officially announced the One Developer Edition. This version of the HTC One will be sold to users with an unlocked SIM slot and unlocked bootloader, the latter of which will allow buyers to mess around with their phones and do things like load custom ROMs onto it.

In terms of specs, the HTC One Developer Edition is similar to the plain ol' One that Aaron unboxed recently. That means that it packs a 4.7-inch 1080p touchscreen, quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 processor, 64GB storage, 2GB RAM and front-facing speakers. The One Developer Edition also includes support for 850/1900/2100 MHz HSPA and 700/850/AWS/1900 MHz 4G LTE connectivity, meaning that it should play nicely with AT&T here in the U.S. T-Mobile customers will be able to take advantage of their carrier's refarmed 1900MHz coverage for HSPA service with this One, and it should work with Magenta's LTE  coverage once that network actually goes live.

The HTC One Developer Edition will be made available in "limited quantities" once the regular One launches here in the U.S. We still don't know exactly when that'll be, but HTC does say that interested customers will need to pony up $649 to call one of these unlocked units their own. That's not a shock since this is an unsubsidized smartphone being purchased from directly from HTC. 

We've started to see more and more "developer edition" Android phones released lately that feature unlockable bootloaders, including devices from Motorola and Samsung, and it's good to see that HTC is continuing that trend with its flagship One model. The Taiwanese device maker has been adding support for more and more devices to its HTCdev bootloader unlock tool in the past year or so, and the HTC One Developer Edition shows that the company is still tinkerer-friendly. Will you consider picking up one of these unlocked HTC One models once they're finally made available?

Via HTC Blog