When the Google edition of the Samsung Galaxy S4 was announced during the keynote of recently held Google I/O 2013, everyone thought that the Galaxy S4 is going to be the only non-Nexus smartphone to run stock Android. However, the HTC One is one of the best smartphones around and the device will be giving tough competition to the Galaxy S4 when it comes in stock Android.

During an interview at the All Things D's D11 conference, Android head Sundar Pichai confirmed that HTC One's Nexus-version will also be headed to Google Play store.

Pichai also showed the HTC One handset running stock Android without HTC Sense user interface and any other preloaded applications. The Android chief said that the HTC One with stock Android will be available on Google Play store just like the Samsung Galaxy S4. The HTC One with 'Nexus experience' will be available from June 26.

The Google edition of HTC One will be an unlocked device and will work on AT&T and T-Mobile's LTE networks just like the Samsung Galaxy S4. When it comes to pricing, the HTC One will be $50 lesser than the Galaxy S4 as it will be available for $599.

Pichai appeared pretty impressed with the HTC One's hardware and termed it one of the best Android phones in the current market.

The announcement of the Google edition of HTC One is not a sudden revelation as rumor mills were churning about it for some time.

Although HTC had earlier denied that there will be a Google edition of the HTC One, technology website Modaco last week published a report saying that the arrival of HTC One with Vanilla Android was imminent.

The HTC One comes with a 4.7 inch 1080 pixel Super LCD3 display. The device is powered by Qualcomm's quad-core Snapdragon 600 processor clocked at 1.7 GHz and is supported by a 2GB of RAM. The smartphone sports a 4 megapixel rear-facing camera with OIS feature and a 2.1 front facing camera.

The phone comes in 32 and 64GB internal memory versions and it does not support any microSD memory card.