

Google Nexus 4 Sells Out In Less Than An Hour (in Australia) - tdfx
http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2012/11/google-nexus-4-sells-out-in-less-than-an-hour/

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error54
I've said it once and I'll stay it again: this phone is a steal. It has
comparable specs to phones that cost twice as much so it's not really a
surprise that it's selling so well but like someperson said, there's no
telling how many units were actually sold. I have a feeling that the entire
Nexus line will do quite well this year.

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someperson
What matters in this case is the number of units that were available (now
sold) - it's likely a small amount on purpose, since selling out fast is great
for publicity.

Though unlike Nexus 7, the Nexus 4 pricing is competitive to the US price -
the AUD is worth more than the USD and the Australian price is only $50 more
(most of which is accounted by the 10% GST tax.)

Australia still has to pay a little more than the US than justified by tax
differences, but it's better than the huge price differences it normally has.

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scragg
Well if they sold out, wouldn't the units available and sold be the same?
Unless they are selling units that don't exist yet. Apple does this too, they
say "We sold out in x hours" and neglect to say how many units they sold. That
info does come out later after the headline wears off.

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megablast
You are missing the point. If they sold out of 10 units, that is not
impressive. If they sold out of 10,000 units, that is pretty amazing for
Australia.

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buro9
I assume it's sold out in the UK.

For a brief period of time the 16gb model showed as being available, but a
very buggy shopping cart meant that it was nigh on impossible to actually
checkout.

Now it's showing as "coming soon" again.

Edit: And now I've just received the email saying that it's available... oh no
it's not.

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digitalclubb
This was so frustrating, to add the item to your cart, to then be thrown
constant errors and being unable to proceed.

Of all the people, you would have expected Google to be able to handle the
traffic.

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ryanhuff
You would think so, but this isn't new for Google.

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godbolev
When has this happened before?

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alvarosm
Google checkout/wallet is possibly the worst product Google ever made
(excluding products that were eventually killed). If you've ever used it as a
seller you've probably come across multiple issues that are never solved
despite many people desperately trying to contact google (mostly failing to
contact any human being, let alone one that would forward issues to
developers) about them. It's no surprise it couldn't handle shit. The team
left Google a few months ago too (there were some stories here about it I
think).

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inflatablenerd
It's probably worth mentioning that in Australia, off contract phone are far
more popular than they are in the US. We have many competitive pre-paid
options, so buying a phone outright often is cheaper, or better value than
going on a plan. The Nexus 4 may have found the perfect market for skipping
carriers.

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zmmmmm
Plus with LTE having very low presence / uptake (and tiny coverage area) the
no-LTE disadvantage is meaningless.

~~~
mcbridematt
I would disagree. LTE is rolling out pretty rapidly, and there are quite a few
places where 3G is useless, even on Telstra. Melbourne CBD has been a long
running issue, so has parts of Perth and Sydney, apparently.

DC-HSDPA is great but the lack of uplink speed upgrade to go with it seems to
be an issue, IMO. I've seen a few situations where I can pull a few megabits/s
on 3G but now the uplink is seriously congested, so interactive applications
become very poor.

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kamjam
But if you buy this phone now, and you can reasonably expect there to be a new
version out in a years time with LTE support... right about the kind of time
that you start to get good LTE coverage. It's the same story in the UK. There
is only a few trial areas with LTE at the moment.

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hkmurakami
Ugh, I need to have the company's purchasing department buy a Nexus 4 for our
dev team, but if it's going to sell out so quickly, I'm virtually guaranteed
to be out of luck :(.

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kumarm
Not to sound cocky but No developer with self respect should be working for a
company that wouldn't let developers buy THE DEVELOPMENT phone if developers
are working on smartphones.

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StavrosK
His company is letting him buy it. The phone's just sold out, so he can't.

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fcatalan
It's selling in Spain right now, but can't get it because the Play Store has
melted.

edit: It's gone now, so that was about 15 minutes. I got mine, yay! It's funny
how even Google can't properly plan for huge traffic spikes.

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ryanhuff
When (what time) does it go for sale in the US?

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tdfx
Seems like no one is sure, but there's a lot of people on twitter (#nexus4)
who are planning to wait until 3am EST (12am PST)

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ditoa
6am in the UK and still nothing in the UK Play Store :(

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tehayj
It will launch in the next 90 minutes in Germany. (The German Google press
dude confirmed that yesterday evening) <https://de.twitter.com/frischkopp>

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conradfr
French play store is selling it but it's buggy.

Fun to see that even Google can't sometimes handle load.

~~~
ryanhuff
Google has regularly demonstrated an inability to handle large volumes of
buyers. The Google IO ticket sales have been a joke the last two years.

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alvarosm
The problem is google wallet/checkout, it's a joke. Worst payment processor
ever.

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jpdus
Got the mail that the Nexus 4 is available at 9:39am, by then it was already
sold out for 20mins (Germany)... a bit unlucky, today being the only day this
week where i had an unskippable meeting at 9.

This launch was a big fail and especially if the shortage was planned, this
will backfire at Google. You cant announce a big product launch (at a
bargaining price) and then just have a few thousand units available (it cant
be more, i was quite succesful in the Touchpad fire sales last year which
lasted longer). Additionally the 9am launch (on a working day) wasnt even
announced beforehand and google should have known (at least from E-Mail
notification subscriptions) that demand outstrips supply by far.

Anyway, hope they can handle my scraping traffic now, waiting for new ones ;).

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sonier
Waiting patiently for the Nexus 10 to be available here. Anyone else looking
at getting one of these?

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tluyben2
I am for the screen as well. But like others; I really need a keyboard dock.
Why don't all big tablet makers learn from the Transformer? Or is it only
geeks who like that thing? But for the resolution the Nexus 10 is too good to
not buy.

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bryanlarsen
Given the number of pogo pins, they must be for both power & USB, so a
keyboard dock is quite possible. (If it is just power, the dock could use
bluetooth.

If the Nexus 10 is successful, somebody will make a keyboard dock for it. I'm
almost confident enough of that to buy a Nexus 10 today and use my bluetooth
keyboard for the time being.

While I'm confident somebody will make a keyboard dock, I'm not as confident
that it will be a GOOD dock. So I'm going to wait for a bit.

~~~
tluyben2
Well yeah, that's my reasoning as well. I really like the transformer dock but
it can be better. When I dock I want to go for some serious work so it doesn't
have to be THAT portable (like the transformer). I hope it's successful or
that a transformer-like comes with the same resolution.

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maayank
What is the status in the U.S.?

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tdfx
I got an order in for a 16GB Nexus 4 after about 5-10 minutes of shopping cart
and payment errors on the Play Store. My order's timestamp is 11:50am. Looks
like it's all sold out in the US... before the stated 12pm PST release time. I
think Google pissed a lot of people off today.

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wwweston
Can anybody recommend another Android device that's competitive in terms of
quality? I've been holding off buying in hopes of geting the Nexus 4, but the
prospect of holding off again and perhaps having the same experience as today
isn't very appealing.

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josteink
Like everyone else in this thread, I agree what's interesting is not that it's
sold out, but how many were actually sold.

Sadly nobody seems to have those numbers available.

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Hendrixer
I'm such a nexus nerd, but my International Galaxy S III is just killing first
and asking names later. I might geat the international Note II

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greenmountin
It's weird how with all the adulation over the GSIII, no one dings the screen.
The quality hit is pretty noticeable in an AT&T store. I wandered back and
forth from iPhone, Lumia, etc, and had also checked out the RAZR HD earlier
that day -- which has the same subpar sparkle-grains display.

This is one of the cynical things that makes me wonder if sites ever actually
have time to review new devices. Their "one job" should be to see through the
marketing-speak ("Super AMOLED", "IPS", "retina display") and tell us what A)
looks better, and B) uses less power at a given nits.

I've had an iPhone 4 for 2 years now, and can't really stomach going to one of
those poorer screens. The Optimus G is beautiful, and that's why I'm going to
snag a Nexus.

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noamsml
I have a buddy who has an international Galaxy Note II, and for what it's
worth, I think the screen looks magnificent compared to the screen of the
Nexus 7, which isn't half bad (my phone is a Nexus S 4G, so the comparison is
moot).

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greenmountin
You're right, the Note II in store was pretty good, but with its size the
density was slightly less pleasant. I think that'll be more of a personal
preference thing.

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Danieru
Sold out in Canada. Turns out it went on sale ~20 minutes ahead of time. Guess
I'll be waiting a few more weeks to replace my N900.

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thedangler
How about Canada? I was supposed to get an email today but never did. Anyone
else from Canada get one?

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robmclarty
Same here. Guess we wait until 9 PT? I've got my credit card# copied into
memory, ready to paste ;)

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vibrunazo
Wouldnt it be faster to use it to create a google wallet account then just pay
in one click? Whatever gets you an edge over the competition :-)

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robmclarty
^^ This is a better solution. I've learned my lesson in not getting my phone
:(

