said by Lone Wolf:Google will assure all that the build quality will be good and the preliminary reviews look good. Of course there is no SD card slot, LTE and it will be a pure GSM device.
That's just marketing; it's obvious that it will still work even without GSM, provided you have UMTS. :-p
FYI: UMTS does support simultaneous voice and data, and doesn't require for there to be any GSM service.
I think it's great that the phone is really affordable and free of contracts; much better than having a useless LTE (since T-Mobile USA has no LTE network anyways).