I waited up last night…I’m not going to lie. I actually started refreshing the Google Play page at around 9:30pm and began following the Reddit posts around 10. This all brought me back to my iPhone chasing days!! There was speculation that Google would began a pre-order process at midnight and then those rumors were quickly dismissed with reports that this wasn’t a pre-order, but the actual purchase. That fueled more speculation and excitement around what time all this was going down.

People were arguing about what timezone was in effect, what country was going to get their’s first, whether or not 2-day shipping was going to be an option and how quickly things would sell out. Then came the reports from Australia saying that the Nexus 4 sale had started early by mistake and everyone who placed an order had it cancelled shortly after. Then they started reporting that the 16GB was sold out and the 8GB was sure to follow.

All of the night’s events—phone calls to Google support, Reddit updates, blog posts and even YouTube videos had the makings of an iPhone/AT&T launch written all over it. We can all remember those days…server crashes, people getting bounced off the shopping cart page, users reporting successful orders only to see them get cancelled later and the countless arguments from people claiming they “knew” how to get through.

Yet today was rather peaceful.

I was expecting a 9am PST release time, so naturally I was refreshing my phone every few minutes during my morning commute. I got to work, attended a meeting and quietly walked to my office. Once inside, I launched the live stream of a local radio station and opened the Play store. I began my refresh regiment once again and was delighted to see that at 8:33am the “Coming Soon” message had been replaced with an “Add to cart” message.

I added the 16GB model and processed my order. It took about 30 seconds as I imagine I was only one of hundreds if not thousands doing the exact same thing and then I got my order confirmation alert and order email.

At 8:58am, I did another refresh just out of curiosity and I was surprised once again that the “Coming Soon” message was back! If I assume that the order process started at 8:30am, then Google successfully sold out of the 16GB models in less than 30 minutes. As of this writing, the 8GB models are still available. UPDATE (9:23am): The 8GB models are sold out.

I just wanted to share my story. When I get my new phone this week, I’ll be posting a video comparison between it and the Galaxy Nexus (GSM) as well as my initial thoughts on the new device. For those of you who got your Nexus 4, congratulations!