Android Police reports that the Google Play edition of Samsung's Galaxy S4 has begun to get its Android 5.0 Lollipop update, which means that every past and present Google Play Edition device will soon be running Google's latest operating system. The S4 was the last of the GPE phones to receive the update—it was preceded by the Moto G, the HTC One M7 and M8, Sony's Z Ultra, and the LG G Pad 8.3.
Google Play Edition phones and tablets look and feel like Nexuses, but behind the scenes the OEMs are still doing much of the heavy lifting. Google provides the software and distributes the update, but ultimately your phone's manufacturer still needs to handle things like the kernel, drivers, and firmware. The only Google Play Edition devices currently listed on Google's site are the 2013 Moto G and the HTC One M8; neither is in stock as of this writing.
We had hoped that Google and the OEMs would be working together in the future to deliver Android updates to the Google Play Edition devices (and, hopefully, other phones) at the same time, but Lollipop's rollout has taken the better part of two weeks. Device owners are still getting Android updates faster than most people—Nexus phones and tablets only began getting over-the-air updates and factory images a month ago. The 2014 Moto X and Moto G, some variants of the LG G3, and the newest Nvidia Shield tablet have also been updated.
