Andre Yoskowitz
27 Nov 2012 18:00
For the second time in as many weeks, Google has failed miserably while trying to sell their latest smartphone, the Nexus 4.
Early this morning, I received an email from Google letting me know that the Nexus 4 would be back in stock beginning at 3PM eastern time.
Having lost out on the phone the first time around as Google's servers crashed and burned, I figured they must have prepared better for the second round. I was wrong.
At 3PM on the dot, I headed to the Google Play Store and attempted to purchase an 8GB Nexus 4. First, I received a "sold out" notice. After refreshing, I was able to add the device to the cart. Hitting "Proceed" gave me a new error, "Due to high demand, your order could not be processed. Please try again later." On a third attempt, I was met with a generic error.
Now, the Store offers this warning: "Google Play is currently experiencing very high traffic. Nexus 4 is not sold out and will still be available for purchase. Please try again shortly. Thank you for your patience"
This has been going on for 3 hours now, and I can't imagine Google has actually sold one device yet. All this, and the company still expects the phones to ship in 5 weeks. Yes, 5 weeks. I have been an Android user since 1.1 on the T-Mobile G1, and this experience is no way to treat loyal fans of the OS.