Google Nexus One: You can get it
Last week Google officially unveiled its Nexus One ‘superphone’, sporting a dynamic noise suppression from Audience, a 3.7″ OLED display and a 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon chipset. The Nexus One runs on Android 2.1, the newest version of Eclair, and comes with a host of popular Google applications, including Gmail, Google Voice and Google Maps Navigation.
The Google Nexus One is one of the most anticipated phones in recent times and is seen by many as an alternative to Apple’s very popular iPhone. But for Google fans trying to get their hands on the Nexus One in South Africa in the coming weeks the outlook is not positive.
The ‘Google Phone’ website – through which the Nexus One will be sold – greeted South African visitors with the message: “Sorry, the Nexus One phone is not available in your country”. Google did however announce that it has an agreement with Vodafone to distribute the Nexus One.
Vodacom last week confirmed that Vodafone’s agreement with Google covers all of Vodafone geographies, including South Africa. The offer will initially be introduced in Europe, starting with the UK in the next few weeks. Other European countries will be introduced during the course of 2010.
There is however no certainty as to whether Vodafone/Vodacom will launch the Nexus One in South Africa. Vodacom said that they expect specific country details to be announced in due course by Vodafone, but that no further information is available at this stage.
But South Africans, desperate to get their hands on the Google Nexus One, have a way to get their hands on the newly launched device. While local consumers may not be able to purchase the Nexus One directly, Vodafone has confirmed that the phone is not network locked and has no APN in the handset.
People with friends in the United Kingdom can therefore ask them to purchase the phone from Vodafone and ship it to South Africa. There is however one challenge: As there is no APN, accessing the Google suite of services may not be possible, unless the users are tech savvy enough to install their own APN.
The “unlocked” Google Nexus One will retail for $529 – R3886 at an exchange rate of 1 USD = 7.34650 ZAR. The Nexus one is currently available to consumers in the UK and US via the Google Phone store.
Google Nexus One in SA – comments and views
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