It’s worrying when you see the larger sites reporting that the HTC One and the Samsung Galaxy S4 will not be receiving official updates from Google like first though making them essentially non Google Edition phones.

I was halfway through writing a post about how the three companies have gone and disappointed people and made liars out of themselves when I had a thought…

The HTC One and the Samsung Galaxy S4 devices that are being shipped for review are being shipped courtesy of the respective PR teams meaning that the devices are coming direct from HTC and Samsung with the OS pre-loaded so it’s highly likely that what people are seeing is essentially how it will look when bought however and here’s the big thing, I’m led to believe that Google has purchased a separate stock of both devices from HTC and Samsung and based on that and that alone I don’t believe that what people have to review is what will hit the market.

Add that to the fact that after a bit of digging I found this very statement on the HTC Website:

[toggle title=”HTC Website” state=”open” ]This special edition device, priced at $599, will be available in the United States (initially) and supported on GSM networks. Out of the box, this special edition HTC One will run Android 4.2.2 with subsequent software updates provided by Google[/toggle]

From the statement it looks like the software that will ship is HTC and Samsung’s but all subsequent software updates provided by Google after 4.2.2.

Now I’m not one to say I have this 100% right however you can’t deny what you see in black and white and for me, I will live on the premise of that fact and that fact alone.