Despite being a Sony employee, I hadn’t heard about this before it became public. Congrats Sony Xperia – I’d been hoping Sony would do a Nexus or a GPE for a long time. While I’ve heard that not many people actually buy the GPE devices, I think it represents a base confidence in the hardware’s primacy and longevity.
http://blogs.sonymobile.com/2013/12/10/introducing-sony-z-ultra-google-play-edition/
Nice, I always though the Experia line was quite enticing, but compared to the Nexus line they just didn’t have enough pull for me. This closes the gap a bit, even though 6″ is definitely too big for my hands. Even the Nexus 5 is a bit of a stretch for me.
Here’s to hoping that Sony will produce a Nexus device down the line.