Buying the Nexus 4 (or Nexus 10 or chromebook) from Belgium

Although I don't read *every* cellphone comparison, it's clear the LG Nexus 4 offers great value for money, moreso because it just got discounted 100 dollar (and consequently 100 euro as well, at least the funny currency conversion works in our advantage for once).

Of course being in Belgium, you can't buy these devices from the Google play store. You can buy them from mediamarkt (who add 100 euro on top of the price just for fun), from ebay (the price drop hasn't been reflected in the prices yet) or you can insist on ordering it in the Play store.

One way to do this is to pretend your internet connection is in Germany, your address is in Germany and your credit card is in Germany. Sounds difficult, but it's just a bit tedious, that's all :)

Pretend you're in Germany

• Use firefox, install the 'foxyproxy' addon, configure a german proxy (see http://spys.ru/free-proxy-list/de/ ). 
• See if it worked by going to http://ctrlq.org/maps/where/
• Do the ultimate test and go to play.google.com -> you should be able to shop for the Nexus devices

Pretend you live in Germany

• create an account at mailboxde.com
• read carefully their mail about how to fill in the address and how the site works in general

Pretend you have a German credit card

• Go into Google wallet, delete your credit card and reenter it with the same values except for the address: this should be the address provided to you by mailboxde.com

Order It!

After all this effort you can finally order your Nexus device (if the site errors out try again a bit later).

UPDATE: the phone arrived after about 2 weeks, and cost about 270 in total; good deal!

Thanks to the blog of Koen Delvaux for detailing most of these steps! I was going to use the 'TunnelBear + borderlinx.com + entropay.com' route, but via Germany was simpler although surprisingly not cheaper.

Hopefully some less consumerist topic next time, and a bit sooner too...