Much to the chagrin of AT&T and Verizon, Samsung will be releasing a Developer Edition Galaxy S4 on their networks. The phone comes in Black Mist with 16GB of internal memory, but most importantly, it will ship with an unlocked bootloader.
Both AT&T and Verizon have long histories of keeping devices locked down to maintain control over the user experience as well as disable certain features. The iPhone for instance, was capable of tethering its data connection via jailbreak tools for quite some time before AT&T enabled it as an official feature, albeit for an additional monthly fee.
Samsung itself broke the news of the Developer Edition Galaxy S4 on its website. The announcement comes just days after Google announced its own version of the Galaxy S4 for AT&T, which also ships with an unlocked bootloader, runs a stock version of Android Jelly Bean and receives updates directly from Google. Though no such variant has been announced for Verizon, it's certainly beginning to look like AT&T will have to overcome a few obstacles if it intends to mandate any kind of proprietary user experience with the S4.
It's unclear when the Samsung Galaxy S4 Developer Edition will be released or how much it will cost, but developer-edition devices don't typically receive a carrier subsidy since they're sold directly by the manufacturer, so expect to pay north of $600 for an unlocked Galaxy S4.
Of course, you can also purchase a regular Galaxy S4 from your preferred provider and simply root it yourself, but this will void the warranty and it isn't as pleasant as simply unboxing an S4 already set up the way you like.
In terms of specs, the Samsung Galaxy S4 Developer Edition is the exact same hardware as the carrier-locked S4, so unfortunately, almost nobody is still getting the octa-core variant.
