So I did not get a Nexus 4 on Tuesday. I got a Nexus 4 order confirmation email on Tuesday, after about ninety minutes of the most infuriating checkout experience I've had with Google since, I don't know, the original Google Voice invite system.
Here's what happened, for anyone who missed it (or anyone who, like me, is still refreshing their Gmail waiting for a shipping notice). Google put the Nexus 4 up for sale through Play Store yesterday around midday: no carrier contract, $299 for the 8GB model, $349 for 16GB, made by LG. On paper that's an absurd price for a phone with a 1.5GHz quad-core processor and a 1280x768 display that looks genuinely gorgeous in person (I saw one at a friend's place a couple weeks back at a launch event and have been thinking about it since). Compare that to $649 for an unlocked iPhone 5 and the math isn't close.
Except almost nobody could actually buy one. The Play Store checkout flow just... broke. I'd get to the shipping address page and it would spin forever. Then an error. Then I'd go back to the product page and the "Add to Cart" button would be gone entirely, like the listing had vanished. Twitter was full of people in the exact same loop, refreshing, screenshotting error messages, comparing notes on which step failed for them. My coworker Dave had it worse: he actually got through checkout, got a confirmation number, and then received an email an hour later saying his order was cancelled because they'd oversold. That's a rough way to find out you don't have a phone anymore.
I finally got mine to go through a little after 1pm, on maybe my eighth or ninth attempt, using my phone's browser instead of my laptop for no reason I can actually justify except that I was out of ideas. No confirmation it shipped yet, just the "we got your money" email. So now I wait.
The Nexus 10 tablet launched at the same time, if anyone cares about that one: $399 for 16GB, made by Samsung this round instead of Asus, and from what I've read it sold out just as fast. I didn't even try for that one. One frustrating purchase attempt at a time, thanks.
On the LTE thing. I know this is the complaint everyone's making and I'm going to make it too: no LTE radio in the Nexus 4 is a genuinely dumb omission for a phone launching in November 2012. Verizon and AT&T have been building out LTE coverage all year and it's not some fringe feature anymore. That said — and I say this as someone who will absolutely still be using this phone on HSPA+ — I'm not sure it matters as much in practice as the comment threads want it to. My current phone is a Galaxy Nexus on Verizon and half the time LTE just means I burn through my data cap faster before AT&T (sorry, before Verizon, I typed that wrong, this is what happens when you've had four cups of coffee and no sleep) throttles me anyway. I'd rather have stock Android and fast updates than a marginally faster connection I can't fully use most days.
The Galaxy Nexus, by the way, has gotten noticeably sluggish over the past couple months, which is the actual reason I was so locked in on getting one of these yesterday instead of just waiting to see if stock improved. Eighteen months old and it's already stuttering on basic app switching. I don't think that's entirely Google's fault, my Verizon variant has been a slow-update mess compared to the GSM version, but it's part of why I wanted a clean Nexus device again badly enough to sit there hitting refresh like a crazy person during my actual work hours.
Anyway. If you tried to buy one yesterday and got the cancellation email like Dave did, my condolences. Try again today, apparently there was a restock this morning, though I haven't confirmed that myself since I'm not about to relive yesterday twice in one week.