Samsung Galaxy S4 Nexus Runs Stock Android AOSP! SGS4 Without TouchWiz, Arriving in June!

If you love Samsung Galaxy S4's hardware but you're not so much a fan of the Korean company's rather 'resource intensive' Nature TouchWiz UX skin for Android replete with extra features like Group Play, S Health, Dual Camera, Smart Scroll, and S Translator and that's the only thing what's keeping you from acquiring the flagship handset, then I have great news for you!

Google's next Nexus smartphone - the one that will formally supersede Nexus 4 by LG (or, at least, join it in the current line-up) - will actually be just the Samsung Galaxy S4 running the latest stock Android AOSP!

The company made the formal announcement earlier at the Google I/O developer conference being held at San Francisco, California.

The Nexus-variant of Samsung Galaxy S4, which also has an unlocked bootloader, will land in the United States on June 26, 2013 and will be available sans contract for $649 or around $76 less than the regular version sporting all of Samsung's smart features. As yet, we don't know if Google had chosen the Octa Core SGS4 version for this new Nexus or if users will also get a Quad Core model similar to the SGS4 variant launched in the Philippines and in the US earlier last month.

What we do know though is that Google will only be offering a 16GB version and that we can expect Kimstore to bring Samsung Galaxy S4 Nexus to the Philippines as soon as units march out of Google's warehouses. Also, I want to note that Smart Communications has been very consistent in offering Google Nexus devices to its subscribers these past few years. SGS4 is LTE-capable, which means that Smart can definitely offer it as bundled handset with its new and affordable LTE plans. Let's see if Smart will do just that.

I own a Nexus 7 tablet made by Asus and what I find particularly cool about having a Nexus device is that you're always the first to get the latest firmware upgrades straight from Google. So if you're a big Android fan and you always want to be at the forefront of what Google has to offer in its mobile platform, a Nexus release is definitely the way to go.