How to Order Google’s Nexus One Smart Phone if You Live Outside the US, UK, HK, or Singapore
As we all know, Google launched its first smart phone on January 5th, 2010. Luckily for people living in the US, UK, Hong Kong or Singapore, you can order it directly from Google from their web store. For the rest of us, we are either forced to wait for a change in their shipping policy or work our way around this. In a global Internet world, anything is possible. Here is the easy guide how to get the phone to your own doorsteps within a few days, I’m waiting for mine to arrive as I’m writing this.
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Get access to the ordering process by downloading and installing the free Hotspot Shield software (Windows & Mac only). By installing this you protect your location and IP address so that Google’s web store won’t block you out from the ordering process. When installed and activated, proceed to the next step.
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Sign up for a US based shipping address at MyUSABox.com. In practice, this is free as the US $5 they charge for registering will be credited to you when you use the service for the first time. They ship products worldwide and even repackage the boxes for an additional fee to help minimize custom declarations in your local country.
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Sign up for a Google Checkout account. If you already have a Google / Gmail account, you can add that easily through your Google account settings.Note that you can use any international shipping address and credit card for this purpose, it does not have to be the MyUSABox address you just signed up for
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Order your personal Nexus One phone phone by pointing your browser to http://www.google.com/phone. Please make sure you opt for the SIM free phone at $529 + sales tax (a NY based shipping address will add $46.95 sales tax to your order, totalling at $575.95). Also, make sure you enter the MyUSAbox shipping address and Google Account billing address to the order.
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Wait for your N1 to arrive to MyUSABox. You should get notified by email as soon as it arrives unless your e-mail spam filters are too tight.
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Log in to MyUSABox and forward your box to your home address, it should arrive within a few days.
This should be simple enough to do in 15 minutes, unfortunately you have to pay the additional shipping cost but it should be reasonable if you really want to try out the new phone from HTC and Google. For me, shipping was a fair overpriced $49 to EU (including re-packaging), giving a total price of $625 (~€435) for the whole adventure.
“installing the free Hotspot Shield software (sorry, Windows only)”
One thing worth noting is that Hotspot Shield IS actually available for Mac as well as for Windows. Otherwise, thanks for the tips! Now I just need a blog post to show me how to get the money to order one
Is the phone locked to some us operator when it arrives?
No, the phone is not locked to any specific operator if you select the SIM free option costing you $529.
Do you have to pay additinal fees?
I think usualy u have to pay 19% tax for importing mobiles to europe, or is this avoided by the repacking?
In which country did you received it with a total cost of $625?
There weren’t any import taxes?
The $625 is before any local import taxes and custom fees. I usually use the re-packaging/invoicing option to speed up the shipment and spare myself from a 2-3 day delivery delay in the receiving end and a required 2h drive to the international airport to pick it up. Of course, this usually saves you some money as well…
I could proceed till google checkout, then all I get is a message “..encountered unexpected error processing your request. Please try again in a few minutes.” I’m using a PPTP VPN. Has anyone a problem at checkiing out?
@li
I ended up using Hotspot Shield due to checkout and other problems during the order process when I initially tried quite a few Web based proxy solutions (I first wanted to avoid installing a software on my computer). All other tried solutions encountered problems when hitting Java script and/or HTTPS connections at some point (checkout switches to from HTTP => HTTPS, i.e. a secure connection).
Hotspot Shield was the first proxy solution that actually took me through the whole process.
I want to do this (I live in South Africa), however I’m a little concerned about having to “activate the phone”.
On the http://www.google.com/phone/ it has a section that reads:
“Already have one?”
with the following links below it:
“Activate my Phone”
“Track Order”
“Get Help”
If I need to activate it, will I have to get someone to do it in the US with their Sim card?
Will the phone be locked when I get it? (the “Activate my Phone” link doesn’t take me anywhere – just refreshes page).
Really worried that I’ll be ordering a rather expensive brick.
Has anyone had any luck with their phone activation? Or is the activation not required?
Jim
@Jim,
No need to worry, the activation is only for the T-Mobile N1 phone. The SIM free is completely open, I’m using it in Finland right now and it did not require any kind of activation.