Sadly, as of January 2015, "Google Play Edition" variants stopped being sold altogether. The last phones sold before the closure of this program were the HTC M8

Sadly, as of January 2015, "Google Play Edition" variants stopped being sold altogether. The last phones sold before the closure of this program were the HTC M8 and the Galaxy S4 (which now are obviously about 3 generations behind). As Chen notes, flashing is a very difficult process for "non-techies" and actually near impossible for carrier variants of flagship phones due to bootloader restrictions.