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Blimey, priced to sell is a bit of an understatement for Google’s latest Nexus devices, and sell they bloody-well did. Google’s stock was apparently cleaned out in under an hour, so if you want a cheap Nexus 4 or Nexus 10, you’ve got a bit of a wait on your hands. Or you could head down your local network store and fork out an extra ton or so in change.
Both the 8GB (£240) and 16GB (£280) Nexus 4s have run dry at old Goog, with only a ‘coming soon, notify me’ option left. At the time of writing, the 32GB Nexus 10 at £390 was sold out, but there’s still stock of the £320 16GB variant — who knows how long that’ll last.
Still, if you’re desperate for a Google-shaped tablet, the Nexus 7 with its brand new 32GB 3G-variant is just waiting for your call. [Google via TechRadar]
still says in stock when i just went there
my mistake nexus 10 still in stock
I cant get over how fast they sold out
would love to know figures on how many they had available
my guess is lots of people bought them up to resell online for higher prices
I doubt it, since they’ll be back up for sale at the same price within a couple of weeks.
People pay over £1000 to get an iPhone quickly.
People who do that are of a separate breed. I don’t imagine people interested in the Nexus would do the same.
@anthropolyte – Really? Have you checked eBay? Cheapest ‘buy it now’ I’ve found is £360.
When companies have as much money to burn as Google, why the hell do they not just buy in enough stock?
Got to play with one yesterday, very nice and responsive.
In general, be interested to know how many units of product X vendors actually have in stock when they sell out. Nintend, Apple and others do this all the time, but we don’t know how many they ‘sold out’ of. 10? 100? 1000? 10,000? And when it comes to retail, how many were allocated to each store? It is easy to only ship a specific amount to retailers or your warehouse and then claim to be ‘sold out’, but what if you only have 1000 in a national warehouse or 5 in a specific store?
#transparency
Until the site states they are out of stock don’t believe that they are, I managed to get a 16gb Nexus 4 at 10:50am this morning. Just gotta keep banging that refresh!
Just to piss people off even more than usual, I didn’t get one, I got two. Due to the bizzare behaviour of the Play store under the weight of demand I didn’t know this until I received 2 confirmation e-mails despite (as far as I could tell) only getting through the transaction process once.
Before anyone asks the second one has already been claimed by MHatti3000.
Gah! Shakes fist. At multiple points I managed to get one in my basket and onto the pay now screen, before it crashed. I am gutted. Hope they release some more soon.
My sympathies to all who missed out.
Looking forward to your review. What is it replacing?
Galaxy Nexus
Impressions so far?
He only ordered it today, dude.
Yeah, I realised – where is that EDIT button, Giz???
Impressions so far. It was a nightmare to order and then I found out I’d managed to order 2 without knowing. That’s all I’ve got for now.
And here is a public thank you…
Thank you
You are my Bro, Bro. Bro’s look after their Bro’s Bro.
Check your wallet transactions, I was charged twice and I have two separate orders when the website choked. Amazingly Google can’t cancel the order
Two Nexus 4s on the way then?
What size? I’ll buy one off you…
yep, that’s what happened to me. Did I not make that clear?
Ill buy one off you.
I got none, but not for lack of want or trying
Oh, man that annoys me. I was up at midnight, banging away at the refresh button. Then at 1AM, then at 6AM, then at 8AM. Then I had to go to work, was in a meeting, and it completely sold out in that time.
I’m pretty sure that Google’s strategy with the Nexus line is never a high volume one. They might struggle to meet demand for a while.
It went on sale just after midnight San Francisco time which was 8am here. I was hitting the refrresh, then the whole play store debacle but finally got my 16Gb Nexus 4 ordered (and confirmed) after being on hold almost an hour
You’re trying to annoy me, aren’t you? Just metaphorically waving that Nexus in front of my face.
I should have written something to monitor the site. Grrr.
It was a great example of how not to release a product and Google should hang their head in shame after writing out lines saying “We must allow pre-ordering” 5,000 times.
On the other hand, you now get to hear us all complain if it’s a pile of disappointment
I personally think pre-orders are a bit annoying anyway, as it means none actually go on sale on release day in cases of high demand. But I will agree that pre-orders would have indicated the demand for the product, which may have prompted Google to order more stock in advance.
Pre-orders make perfect sense. Absolutely no reason they shouldn’t have allowed them. I really hate that google make absolutely awesome products but the rest of their business seems to let them down: terrible marketing and terrible sales acumen.
Yeah, they need to sort that search engine thing out:)
I was at my PC at 8:15 am. I managed to get a 16GB Nexus 4 in my basket 5 separate times before clicking Proceed and receiving an error. If I refreshed my basket, it was emptied and I had to re-add it. In the end, I didn’t get one. I might get over the initial anticipation now and just not bother – how much stock could they have had for them to be sold out in under an hour?
Exactly the same experience as me!
Again, same experience as I had. If Google, pioneer of cloud computing, can’t get a product launch right there isn’t much hope really is there.
If they don’t sort this out before Christmas they’ll be missing a major opportunity.
Same!! I was on it at 8 till 9 then it sold out, got it in my basket a few times, and even the Google wallet thing, but then crashed. GUTTED is not the word.
I was having so many problems, finally got through and then Barclays declined the transaction because it was a large amount (despite the fact I had plenty of money). So I did have one then lost it
I’m the same, my bank cancelled it. Phoned them up and had a massive rant at them considering the let me buy my nexus 7 fine.
The 8GB was in stock when I went on but that is way too small for me.
Slightly annoyed I didn’t even receive an email to tell me it was available. Oh well.
The email notification NEVER came! Luckily I managed to grab one even though the store was acting the craic for a good 20 mins.
I have bought two 32gb nexus 10s by accident this morning because the Google play store was broken and processed my order twice. Google can’t cancel the order so I have one to sell.
I’m looking to buy the 32gb Nexus 10 – where abouts are you based?
£399.00 pay as you go on O2.
I’m going to wait a few weeks.
Had a quick chat with an “Online O2 Advisor”…
———-
Lynn: Hi there. My name’s Lynn I am an O2 Sales advisor, how can I help you today?
Lynn: Hello James. How are you?
James: Hi, I’m enquiring about the Nexus 4
Lynn: Sure, please go ahead with your query.
James: Just wondering on the PAYG cost of the 8GB handset, is this likely to change? Or will it remain at £399?
James: Just with the difference between that price, and the £239 price if bought Sim Free, wondering where the extra £160 comes in from?
Lynn: James, phone is launched recently so for some time price will remain £399 only.
James: (Sim Free price from Google Store)
Lynn: We can not comment or match the price with another dealer.
———-
How on earth did they manage to secure exclusive rights with one hell of a price hike…
I agree. That’s obscene. Companies shaft consumers. (O2 are crap anyway…)
I believe its because Google are actually subsidising the handset themselves hence the extremely low price point when bought SIM-Free.
There was an article on Giz (or some other gadget site) that bought it up.
I’ll be interested in a 32gb version but 16gb ain’t enough.
I was really keen to buy one, and logged on before 8am, and again at around 830. I managed to get the 8Gb (no 16Gb available) in my basket but Google Wallet decided a lower case postcode was invalid, and in the couple of seconds it took to “correct” it hung; and that was that. Really poor experience from Google and one which doesn’t inspire me to try again. For a little more money than a 16Gb Nexus I can buy a used S3 with a warranty and both replaceable battery and SD card slot. This shoudl be an improvement on my old Acer Stream on 2.2, and may even get to work with Sky Go one day. I can dream can’t I?
I had the 8gb in my basket but decided not to check out, I would rather have the 16gb! glad i didnt give in to temptation
out of interest, why do you need the bigger memory? Is it for music and games?
games, need for speed takes over a 1gb alone! i usualy have ps1 roms on my phone too, they’re about 700mb a game too so storage space is quite important to me
ah cool, good to know. I store most of my games on my N7 and use my phone for other apps that need connectivity! Cheers for the response!
Sold out in about the same time it takes to drain the battery.. or so I read
I have had every iphone including the 5 and wanted to try something new for a change but a battery that needs charging before the day is out is like going back to my nokia 101 with slim battery.
Don’t believe everything you read. After all you seem to be implying you can go more than a day on an iPhone and from what I’ve read that’s impossible. I would suggest you go to an Android site like Android Central where they know how to test Androids properly and fairly since they are comparing models against each other, not comparing everything to the OS/ecosystem they bought into.
My iphone5 lasts all day, sometimes with 40% charge when I go to bed and only a couple of times under 20%.
I have no brand loyalty, my computer is a mac, i also have a samsung chromebook an ipad and a nexus7. The one thing I don’t like about the nexus is that it always needs charging, the ipad seems to last a lot longer but that could be to do with the settings on the nexus.
Same with my iPhone 4S (sold now), it lasted all day with sometimes 60% to spare do I didn’t even charge it most nights and it could easily last 2 days with little use.
With the Nexus I might buy 2 wireless charging docks, one for work and one next to my bed, I’m pretty much at work or home so the battery life dosent effect my decision too much.
Managed to get one at precisely 8:12 am, the google wallet page showed an error tried refreshing it, gave up but got a confirmation email next minute
— for those wondering of getting it from CPW simfree price is £389
I had a N4 16Gb in my basket and a 32 N10 then looked at the total as I was about to hit the pay button and though give my self a couple of moments to sike myself up. A minute later went to pay and it said my cart was empty.
phoned google and they said it should be in stock within the next couple of hours..dubious though.
I really hope so. My iphone was robbed a couple of weeks ago. Living without a smartphone sucks!
Thank’s for sharing… I will keep trying.
This is off topic, but I can’t stand how Google just love f**king Asia over. Navigation is still disabled, despite the fact that we know it works because it worked on the hacked version. Nexus devices always get released nearly half a year after it is released in the rest of the world, and at the original release price plus tax. So by the time the Nexus 4 is released in Hong Kong, it is going to cost as much as it does now in UK. Btw, we don’t have VAT. So our tax free price is the same as UK’s after VAT price.
Apple doesn’t treat us this way, and neither does Windows. Asian countries have one of the highest smart phone adoption rates in the world, so there’s no reason why we should be treated as second class citizens. So why the heck is Google consistently f**king us over?
Well Apple and most PC manufacturers do us Brits over normally so I feel your pain.
Judging by the number of comments here, by those that brought one and those that got let down, and the Google website problems it seems that the numbers aren’t small. I don’t recall this kind of traffic then the iPhone 5 went on order – but that is very forgettable.
I think that is due to this being a Tech site, and personally more Techie people would go for an Android phone, thus more comments here, and also 80% of us didn’t end up getting one so we have a good rant about it
They will be able to make around 4 million per month, so if it is a weekly sales limit with no pre-build then it is around 1 million in an hour, if it is month then it is 4 million in an hour, so likely 1-4m. I don’t think they are doing a low number sold out hype thing. As the new Nexus range is in stock, this just seems like a very hot product – and why not, it is high-end phone at mid-range price.
High end phone at low end price
Alot of ebayers say they have accidently bought 4 or something, and selling them at a very decent profit. I reckon alot of that has gone on because the website was sooo fucked up when I was trying for an hour this morning.
Having seen what is coming out I, very decided it is a midrange phone – warm but not hot.
So nearly didn’t get mine, but after a lot of angry refreshing I got my confirm email
Eurgh, it started just as I left the house, by the time I’d read the email (08:17 or something) and added it to my basket the website stopped working and then I lost data connection. Thus I couldn’t order one. Tad fustrating. Does anyone know when they’ll be back in stock on GPlay?
Oh dear. Why did I wait until after work? :’(
It is pretty ridiculous that they aren’t allowing ordering even now. I could understand not taking orders before release but its released and it keeps going back to the notify button. And to make it worse they are apparently getting random bits of stock in an selling for a few minutes over the day. I don’t have time to constantly monitor the site all day. Just start taking orders and ship them as they come in. I don’t even mind paying in advance, its a weird day when a company won’t take your money.
I have been really annoyed all day, I was up late trying to get one early before giving up. Only to get my emails and not getting one despite it only being on sale for 20 minutes and already sold out by that time. Just been such a disappointment as I really need a new phone and now I will have to consider getting something else that isn’t as good, probably a razr i.
i almost bought one today, convinced myself i could finally give up my hardware keyboard, but there were none left when i finally decided on buying one, ah well my desire z will hold me over for a while longer