I hope you're right. That would make for a much nicer proposition, as long as they don't ask for credit card details. But then, what if you register more than one account on the device? Does every account get the $25, or just the first one that activates the device?
That's probably required by Samsung's bloated memory-hogging TouchPiss UI. Who knows? Even on ICS, it was found that having a few apps loaded on the SIII almost filled the RAM. Further testing indicated Samsung's skin as the biggest culprit.