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 …
If (like me) you got your order in in the first 10ish minutes after they appeared - at around 1700 GMT yesterday - your estimated delivery time is 1-2 weeks, after that it's 5-6 weeks, which suggests stock arriving every 4 weeks, which also seems to be the pattern in the US.
Different supplier naturally but my Nexus 7 3G that the website said would ship in 1-2 weeks last Wednesday arrived on Friday - deep joy!
Maybe I'm being cynical but perhaps the pessimistic delivery promises are part of the marketing hype? If that's so Google ought to be careful - Apple have probably patented that too...
</facetious troll>
Apple may have a Jesus phone but they cant stop Xmas fucking things up for business that doesn’t involve homodegradable* plastic.
Unless they are part of the unit-cost price for alcohol campaign of course.
*homodegradeable plastic is that plastic that disintegrates in late January after human contact when the invisible ink on the receipt has faded. It will however last forever in landfill and has the other remarkable property of being impervious to all glues invented by man.
Yep - people just think they'll miss an SD card because they're used to having them - IT'S 16GB FOR FECK'S SAKE - what are they going to do, store BluRays on it?
I have a Transformer Prime and the SD card has only ever been used for (as it turns out, unnecessary) backups - ditto my previous Samsung Galaxy S3.
Stefing,
I have 25GB of music and 45GB of podcasts on my iPod. I could manage the podcasts better - keep fewer on the device and synch more often if I had to. However I do want my entire music collection available. Otherwise what's the point of having it?
Also, I've just moved, and found a bunch of un-ripped CDs in boxes, so that music collection's about to get larger. I've not had an Android in a while, but surely with the new better screens, apps are going to be wanting more storage than before as well.
I'll never listen to all the podcasts. Every time I catch up with one, so I'm listening to it each week as it comes out, I find 2 interesting new ones that I sign up to. By the time I die (at age 2113/4) my relatives will clear out my place and find that they can't move for all the external hard disks with podcasts on them piled throughout my house. Well those and all the books...
I probably listen to a couple a day on the way to and from work, plus maybe another while I'm cooking dinner. So somewhere from 15-20 a week.
Then the BBC go and release the entire archive of something like 'In Our Time' and I download them all, deluding myself that I'll actually listen to more than a couple. Although it was interesting listening to all the Alistair Cooke 'Letter from America' talks on Watergate last week.
Why not? Okay, not full BluRays obviously, but a few years back I had to endure a long bus commute twice a day for about 6 months. The only thing that kept me sane was my PSP. Long after I got bored with the games it continued to prove it's worth as I plowed my way through seasons of spooks, Battlestar Galactica etc which had been compressed down onto the card. I can't see why people wouldn't do the same with their phones now that the screen resolutions and available storage space allow it.
The other thing that makes people stick with removable cards? I can't overstate the convenience of just being able to pull the bloody thing out of the mobile device, whack it into the PC and drag and drop your files like you would any other drive or USB stick vs. Fannying around with proprietary connectors and/or terrible transfer software. Android used to do plug-in drag and drop quite well but they have knackered this a bit in recent updates. I'm sure things will eventually improve, but I'll still stick to a phone that has removable memory just in case.
It's also worth noting that even if you don't remove the card, and just stick with plugging the phone into the PC, separate SD cards have the advantage of being able to be mounted as an external drive, which often isn't possible with internal storage for technical reasons. Though Android does at least support the open standard of MTP, and I like that in Windows for example, this is presented similar to as if it was just another external drive (though indeed, it isn't quite as good, as you say).
"what are they going to do, store BluRays on it?"
But that's an interesting point in itself, especially if we look at certain tablets that also lack microSD. Given the HD resolutions of phones and tablets, not to mention the higher-than-Full-HD resolutions of the Nexus 10 and recent ipads, and given that one of the primary purposes of these high resolutions (especially for tablets) is for viewing videos, I find myself wondering, how does one store movies with high enough resolution to actually take advantage of it? Full HD Blu-Ray is 25GB per disc. One could perhaps use better codecs, but even at best, IME 40 mins of Full HD is over 1GB, so that space quickly fulls up. And that's using Internet-quality codecs that probably have lower quality anyway, so it's a false economy to have higher resolution if you just end up reducing the quality.
Of course there's streaming, but not many people are on a plan that can download many GBs per month. So that leaves sitting on the sofa at home, but I'd rather do that on my big LG smart TV, or on a 17" laptop, than having to awkwardly hold a small tablet. I'm not saying there isn't a use, but I do find this obsession of super high resolutions, simultaneously with limited storage space, an odd choice. (And never mind microSDs, I wonder why no one's made a large tablet with a hard disk - if a primary purpose of tablets is to view media, and one can buy small mp3 and video players that have over 100GB of hard disk space, it seems like it should be possible to put that into a larger device?) It would also be fine if there was lots of storage as standard, but many phones/tablets get limited at 16GB (S3 and Nexus 7/10 at least has 32GB option, and the Transformer Prime you mention has up to 64GB).
This isn't a criticism against the Nexus 4 btw - it's a low cost device with better specs than the competition, despite the lack of microSD, and one can always buy an S3 if you want that. But I do think it's reasonable to criticise limited storage options.
Got 16 GB of fixed storage on my phone. Got all my apps, email etc. in it. Some pictures and video clips.
Lets see...13.5GB free.
Oh I so wish I had more.
Seriously, I cent understand the need to carry my whole 'digital lifestyle' around with me.
I bet those that scream they need 64GB+ only ever have around 10GB in constant churn the rest sits there unread from the day it was installed.
I got Maemo 5, NITDroid and Debian installed on my N900, space used 11.4 GB used out of the 24.4GB assigned as a FAT32 partition. There are remaining partition with the NITDroid install on it to fill it up to 32 GB.
Oh, and I still have a slot for a external SD card, I plan on using this to install Ubuntu on it. I also use it as a fileserver, backup device, music and video device.
So yes, some people use the space some dont. And to be fair, is it really that difficult to provide a space for a SD card? My 30 euro MP3 player can accept SD cards to increase storage size!! When I see phones without it I think its a scam to force people into expensive models/replacements.
I've no idea if other options are better than iCloud, having never really used it. But I do know that all cloud storage systems are shit, at the point you have no signal. And the point you have no signal, is the very time when you need that file that you stuck in the cloud...
I was refreshing my browser window for a few minutes after 5pm. At about 5:05pm, the page changed from "Not available" to "order now", but listing "1-2 weeks shipping time", which to me translates as "still out of stock, but pre-order now"...
Didn't order as I figure I may as well wait until they actually have them.
This post has been deleted by its author
Then you will have a long wait. Clearly the tickbox "associate this device with my Google account", means when you order, you actually have a device with a real serial number that's been manufactured, and on it's way. The 1-2 weeks is to get to them and then get to you.
Either way, your loss, as that batch is now sold out and it's 5-6 weeks, so they are allocating the ones that are being boxed in Korea, rather than the ones that are in transit..
In short:
2-3 days "we have them"
1-2 weeks "they are on their way to us"
5-6 weeks "they are being prepared to be send to us"
17:04 confirmation came through and the order says 1-2 weeks for 16GB
& For those who say 16GB isn't enough: I would have liked an SD card slot, I probably would have been satisfied with an 8GB model with microSD, but for me I find that my tablet with 16GB is sufficient. I can't put my music on there because that weighs down a NAS, my photos are over 30GB, so I just have some pragmatism or find a 1TB microSD card.
Managed to snag a 16Gb one last night @5:10. 1 - 2 weeks away it says - just hoping before Christmas!
The un-expandable memory is a slight downer - but I figure I can scrape by with 16Gb, and everything else about it is awesome. The killer feature though is that its a pure google phone (sim free) so will get all the future updates from google. Any other android handset has a limited lifespan (without resorting to custom ROMs of course)
I get this message from the Play Store "Sorry! Devices on Google Play is not available in your country yet. We're working to bring devices to more countries as quickly as possible.
Please check back again soon."
Perhaps it should be named the Google "Nemesis 4" because getting hold of one on this end of the planet will be a fucking nightmare....
.. delivery quoted as 3-5 days. But then I ordered the less popular 16GB (apparently there are plenty of people who are even tighter than me - who knew?)
E-mailed the Reg to thank them for not letting the great unwashed know about the new stock until after I'd got my order through - though it seems Google have a lot more phones this time: the 16GB model is still showing as available .. in 6 weeks :)
30k went in 5 minutes last time around, just in the UK.
Lets assume all other Euro countries are thee same and US is double that, that's quite alot of phones.
Going by how much longer the phones lasted this time, and how many more people knew about the Nexus 4, I think it would be safe to say the shipments this time were 4x the size of last time...
That is of course, just the Google Play store, so not including o2 and CPW sales.
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!
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.
... 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 :(
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...
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.
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.
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).
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.
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...
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?
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