Yesterday LG officially took the wraps off of its new flagship smartphone, the G2, and confirmed that the device will launch on all four major U.S. carriers. Unfortunately for folks that like the G2 but also happen to enjoy vanilla Android, one shop that LG doesn't currently plan on utilizing is Google's Play Store.
Speaking to Android Community, LG PR representative Ken Hong said that LG doesn't have any plans to offer a Google Play edition G2 "as of right now." Instead, LG will try to focus on using the carriers and their various sales channels to push the G2 into consumers hands and pockets. That doesn't mean that a GPe G2 will never happen, though, as Hong added that things "could change down the road."
Google recently began selling Google Play editions of the HTC One and Samsung Galaxy S 4 in its store, offering consumers the chance to buy one of the current flagship Android smartphones with the vanilla Android OS rather than the manufacturer's custom software. This has led many folks to wonder what other devices will get the Google Play edition treatment, and I'm guessing that we'll continue to see this question asked of the next several major Android hardware releases.
It's definitely kind of a disappointment to hear that LG doesn't currently have any plans for a Google Play edition G2. After all, more choice is always good. We already know that LG will be busy creating customized G2 models for each U.S. carrier, though, and so I'm sure that the company would like to focus as much of its G2 volume as possible on the operators. No one has revealed exactly how many GPe One and Galaxy S 4 units have been sold, but I'm betting that those figures are nowhere near the number of units sold through carrier stores and websites, because that's the way that most consumers do their phone buying.
The one piece of good news in Hong's statement is that LG doesn't seem to have entirely dismissed the notion of a Google Play edition G2, so anyone that'd like to buy such a device will just need to be patient for now. There's no guarantee that one will ever actually pop up, but judging by Hong's statement, there is a chance that it could happen.
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