Samsung: Two Android Phones This Year, Less Google Inside

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Forbes sat down at CTIA with Samsung’s global phone guy, who says the electronics giant will release three Android phones this year. The first will be around June and released outside the U.S., probably in Europe. Two other Android phones will be released in the U.S. later this year on two different carriers, most likely T-Mobile and Sprint.

Samsung is taking longer on the two U.S. phones because they wanted to go less Google. It doesn’t make a lot of sense to me, since I feel one of the strengths of Android is the tight integration with the Google applications like Gmail. Samsung doesn’t see it this way, and they are not planning to release the Google-focused apps. Doesn’t that mean they are losing the primary thing that differentiates Android from the competition?

Samsung also wanted to put its own spin on Android. Hong drew a distinction between devices built on the Android platform and “Google Experience” devices, which not only use Android but are also Google-centric, packed with the search giant’s own applications. “Our commitment is more to the Android phone than the Google Experience device,” Hong said. In other words, Samsung is doing plenty of customization work on top of the Android platform to make operators happy.

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