Google puts Nexus 4 back on sale, sells out pronto
Google’s Nexus 4 smartphone is back on the UK Google Play store, but you’ll have to wait until the new year to get hold of one should you place an order. The LG-made handset has been much in demand and after its launch quickly sold out. Early reports suggested the initial allocation of the secretly 4G smartphone sold out within …
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Re: I wonder ...
Google play isn't available in all EU countries IIRC
Clearly, I'm living under a stone.
What's up out there?
Haven't seen any mention of this but perhaps this is the reason the 16GB is still in stock -
After you purchase a 16GB Nexus 4 the sale page informs you that you cannot buy another one. The 8GB page however lets you buy two before telling you that you cannot buy any more. Personally I am glad they have imposed the limit as that should help to cut down on the eBay listings. I guess it also shows that lots of phones were bought in November simply to flog them on eBay.
For info - the order process was still not error free, but I only had to cope with "due to high demand, there was an error processing your order" 6 times before it went through!
Error during ordering process
I got a garbled error message too: not sure whether I've got one ordered or not as a result. Email says yes; on screen message said no at some point, claiming "errors" would be updated over the next 24hrs. However, if they took any money, that's a contract no matter what their systems do.
I'm in the 5-6 weeks camp, so imagine they can cope with the odd glitch in ordering in this group.
Storage too small for us cheapskates...
... with limited bandwidth in our bundles. Cloud services (such as spotify) are fine, but my paltry 500Mb a month gets eaten pretty quickly (it is however a very cheap bundle)
With a decent amount of music, apps, a couple of Peppa Pig videos for the kids and a bunch of photos I'm already over 16Gb.
Shame really - I was hoping to replace my iPhone with one of these at some point :(
Re: Storage too small for us cheapskates...
You're a cheapskate yet you own a >16GB iPhone?
Re: Storage too small for us cheapskates...
Principal reason why I am switching to £12 per month GiffGaff. I fought hard before I took back my Nexus 4 to CPW as the data tariff was not good enough. And it was too bloody expensive.
My better judgement got the better of me last night and I reordered. I will make the damn cloud work for me damn damnit! Otherwise the stunningly glorious Nexus 4 will become bitter and twisted like me...
Re: Storage too small for us cheapskates...
If there's still time before you switch, you might want to search the Reg's forums for comments on GiffGaff - it's not universal praise by any means.
A tale of two geeks...
Oh and check out a running commentary on my order with a fellow geek here: reading back the SMS trail I thought it was funny (but then I would)...
http://www.androidgenus.com/news/miscellany/ordering-the-nexus-4-a-tale-of-two-texts/
Ordered at 17:10 and it said 1-2 weeks. I unticked the associate with my google account - what was that about?
Simply that when you get it out of the box, it connects to google for you - saves you typing in your details / time on set up.
Plus, if you've already got an android, it'll automatically download your apps for you.
If you associate it with your account it'll set Gmail up for you, and drag in wifi passwords, email accounts etc. from any other Android device you've got (maybe only Android 4 or higher).
It also installs apps you've put on the other devices. It may be only ones you've still got, I can;t remember.
Just in case anyone is doing some sort of survey...
...my confirmation email (at 17:11) said 1-2 weeks. (16G).
So, given luck and a following wind, I should have it by Christmas.
Reference platform
Now THAT is how you do a "Reference Platform" - a device that sells like hot cakes and doesn't upset your partners because you do not make too many of them. Google are showing off Android and they're doing it expertly. Amazon, Google, it's amazing how well companies that traditionally are not manufacturers are now raking it in. They make it look easy, just as Apple did, but really they've created their market from having a brilliant vision. In Google case it was selling a Linux phone branded with Android, a cool name.
By making the platform open, they have won the love of those that appreciate freedom (minus the privacy part, which all phones compromise).
Re: Reference platform
"Now THAT is how you do a "Reference Platform" - a device that sells like hot cakes and doesn't upset your partners because you do not make too many of them. Google are showing off Android and they're doing it expertly."
Ah, ah, ah! It's hardly selling like hot cakes when we have no idea the amount sold and for all we know, there could only be 500 stock per window. Hardly shifting millions on the first day like Apple does on a regular basis. And that's the problem with a reference platform idea. Google can't go hell-blazing to create the perfect Android product and then makes the rest suffer for poor design and UI choices. I mean why on earth are there short-cut buttons in jelly bean?
Android is not cool either. It's just the flip-side to the smartphone coin. The side fandroids are willing to take because it isn't an iPhone.
Re: Reference platform
"Hardly shifting millions on the first day like Apple does on a regular basis."
Note that Android sells over 1 million a day (possibly more now, I don't know the latest figures). That's all year round, rather than just the yearly bump where everyone rushes to buy a product that's been advertised for months previously, and where the sales then fall. Similarly by manufacturer, Samsung sell around 1 million phones a day.
True, we've no idea how many have or will be sold, but I think his point was more that Google are now able to generate this hype on top of the success of Android, and of companies like Samsung. And they do so without annoying them (otherwise there would be the danger that extra success for the LG Nexus 4 would hurt Samsung). And this hype comes from what Google have done, rather than already been publicised by the media months before it was even officially announced.
"The side fandroids are willing to take because it isn't an iPhone."
Current sales are around 75% Android, 15% iphone. iphone has never been the number one platform. So no, Android is not the alternative - rather, whilst other OSs have faded away somewhat, it's iphone that is the alternative to what most people are using. Not that there's anything wrong with that - but just clarifying the facts.
Re: Reference platform
"And this hype comes from what Google have done, rather than already been publicised by the media months before it was even officially announced."
Any company can choose to sell a product, but withhold/limit stock in it's initial release to generate some publicity. Apple did that from the start quite blatently in the iProduct era. There's nothing else more special about the Nexus 4. Apart from it being in a line of Nexus products that Google has taken a while a wake up to to enable to brand itself better, that's it. It's cheaper, i'll give it that; but for major quality compromises no doubt.
Android has always been the alternative because of how dirt cheap it is and how many products that support it exist. If you can find a single model of an Android phone that outsells the iPhone, I'll eat my hat and Paris at the same time.
Re: Reference platform
@the-it-slayer - time to eat your hat and, er, Paris: in summer of this year, samsung galaxy II phone out sold apple's iphone. Suck it down iTard!
EPIC FAIL
Re: Reference platform
i'll take Paris thank-you very much. You can have the hat.
Re: Reference platform
"If you can find a single model of an Android phone that outsells the iPhone, I'll eat my hat and Paris at the same time."
That'd be the Samsung S3, best selling individual device of Q3 2012. Time to eat your hat.
("the iPhone" is not a single model btw, hell even individually labelled models have variations; it's a complete platform/range from a company, and would be better compared to either Samsung sales or Android sales anyway.)
Android is not the "alternative" (75% market share; iphone has never been number one, see my other comment). I'm not sure that cost is the factor, since the high end models sell well (e.g., the S3). It's well publicised that Samsung and Apple make big profits, so there is certainly room to reduce the price without sacrificing quality. And it seems to be the iphone that benefits from other products supporting it - just witness all the "get the iphone app" and all the cars/speakers/leads etc that support just iphones, and not an industry standard solution.
Re: Reference platform
I have owned a galaxy II and iPhone 3S - I would say that the Galaxy II is a higher quality phone, but it should fairly be compared to the iPhone 4. The point is, I see no reason to see Android phones as significantly less quality than the Apple gadgets. It's more of an image / branding kudos than a techie kudos. In fact Android is better, being the more open platform, so arguably higher quality as far as I am concerned anyway.
Shitpeas smackdown of the week award
Surely it has to go to this post.. :-)
"Note that Android sells over 1 million a day (possibly more now, I don't know the latest figures). That's all year round, rather than just the yearly bump where everyone rushes to buy a product that's been advertised for months previously, and where the sales then fall. Similarly by manufacturer, Samsung sell around 1 million phones a day."
Re: Reference platform
Plastic is better than glass? Give me a break. And only fandroids would like to think of their own distortion reality field to think Apple is only image/branding. Go read the Jobs biography first and then come back to me.
In many cases, yes, plastic is better than glass.
Glass is harder so doesn't scratch as easily.
However, plastic (eg. polycarbonate) is much tougher than the toughest glass, so does not shatter.
Personally, I would prefer my phone to scratch rather than shatter when I drop it, as scratches are easier to ignore than shards of glass in my ear, or a starred screen.
Your opinion may differ.
Wrong! It's a portable computer with cellular connectivity. I look forward to the coming 4GB and 8GB "phones".
Goddamnit! Now I want one, after reading all the comments, and how I can't actually have one... Why am I so weak?
Just looked now (UK Google Play site)
And they still have 16GB versions going with 5-6 weeks delivery time, 8 GB obviously all sold out.
Got one in my basket at the moment, I only just about 4.5GB on my Desire Z (phone and 8 GB micro-SD), just thinking about it, oh and the £10 P&P they want to charge.
Got one, not from Google tho
I wandered into a T-Mobile store two weeks ago and was surprised to score their last 12GB Nexus 4 (I'm in Arizona, fyi). Now the missus has my venerable Blackberry, and I've got a "relatively huge" network device clamped to my belt.
One downside, one-day battery-life aside, is the lack of a proper case for it. I bought an Otterbox from Amazon and had to perform surgery with a dremel tool, adding holes for the camera, flash, and most importantly, the proximity detector on the top-left of the display. Without the prox detector uncovered, it assumed that it was constantly mashed against my ear, making it impossible to hang up a call without powering the device off.
The Otterbox also makes it a big ol' device, instead of the shiny, slim, metrosexual accessory that it so yearns to be. I'll live, and so will it, even after I inevitably drop it on a hard surface.
I also had to download a 3rd-party volume-control app to be able to actually hear the remote end of a phone call. That's just weird, but problem solved.
I'm rather enjoying running approximately the same OS on my phone as I do on my desktop (RHES 5.8, btw).
Are Google trying to flood the market with these phones
They would seem to have deep enough pockets to do so if they wish. Assuming they're shipping in sufficient numbers and still not keeping up with supply, this could change the the face of the smartphone markets they're entering.....
Re: Are Google trying to flood the market with these phones
They probably just aren't making all that many. Certainly not the at the rate Apple stamps out iPhone 5s and Samsung stamps out GS3s. They have to walk a line between meeting demand and keeping their partners happy.
If the demand was high enough and production fast enough that it became the #1 selling Android phone, I don't think Samsung would be too happy about that. This is what they were worried about with the Motorola acquisition, though perhaps to smooth ruffled feathers they had LG produce this one. It may not steal sales from the GS3, but it would be stealing sales from Samsung's mid range offerings. As Samsung goes more dominant, the risk that they consider forking Android increases, which an outcome I'm sure Google wants to avoid.
Order times
It'd be interesting to hear as and when you all receive your various Nexii. I got my order in for a 16Gb model about 1708 yesterday and got a confirmation email at 1710. I have an estimated delivery in 1-2 weeks, like others who got theirs at the same time. No dispatch notice in my inbox today I'm sorry to say.
All the chat about the lack of storage got me thinking - I'm replacing a Nexus S with the new Nexus 4 so I'm replacing 16Gb non-expandable memory with the same. A quick audit of my current phone shows that I'm actually only using 7Gb of the available flash memory - much of which is email attachments / contents of the download folder which I could happily clear out, but I still couldn't bring myself to stump for the 8Gb model. The lack of expandable storage is annoying, but from Google's point of view, it's likely to cause a shift towards the use of Drive which would work out well for them...
Shipped already
I ordered Tuesday evening and it reported a wait of 5-6 weeks, but I just received a shipped notification for my 8GB Nexus 4.
Bought mine at 9pm last night. Today it was out for dispatch. Hopefully will get it tomorrow or Friday.
Anyone got a "despatched" note for a 16G yet?
Just wondering...
Re: Anyone got a "despatched" note for a 16G yet?
Not here - email states 3-5 working days - today's day three...
Patience is a virtue
There will always be something far more exciting available in 12 months time. (That's what I tell myself anyway, since I am currently half way through a contract.)
Nexus 4 Shipping now
I ordered mine on the 4th at 7:42pm.
It originally said delivery 4 - 5 weeks but shipped last night with TNT for delivery today.
Re: Nexus 4 Shipping now
Similarly! Ordered 16GB model on the 4th Dec, quoted 4-5 weeks, arriving this afternoon, 3 days later! Brill.
Re: Nexus 4 Shipping now
That sucks. Ordered my 16Gb at 17:09 with estimated 3-5 day delivery - so far NOTHING.
I see Google are opting for the pot luck delivery system.
Re: Nexus 4 Shipping now
Pot luck indeed! I wonder if it has anything to do with payment method or location?
N4 (16GB) - 5:06:14 PM - Mastercard - Edinburgh - 1-2 weeks estimated delivery.
Re: Nexus 4 Shipping now
Finally got an update from Google on my 3-5 day delivery order:
They've admitted on the phone to shipping them in the wrong order, and in an email this morning have informed me that they're now out of stock, and my device is on back order with a 4-5 week lead time.
Not impressed. Not one bit. But on a brighter note - they've generously agreed that after shipping they'll refund the enforced £9.99 delivery charge. Not sure that' really good enough though, do you?
survey
I got the string
Estimated Ship: 1-2 weeks
with an order date of
Order date: Dec 4, 2012 9:14:05 AM PST
or 17:14 UK time..I think...
Time will tell......
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