Nexus 4 Shipping Time Pushed Back To 2013

Yesterday, the LG Nexus 4 returned to the Google Play Store after selling out in just 24 minutes on launch day, and we weren't surprised in the least to see a flood of prospective Nexus 4 owners quickly overwhelm the Play Store with orders. We were thinking for a moment that the phone would sell out once again, but fast forward to today and the Nexus 4 is still available for purchase. There's just one little problem: regardless of which Nexus 4 model you order, you're probably going to have to wait until we're into 2013 to get it.

At the time of this writing, the Play Store listing for the 16GB Nexus 4 says the phone won't ship for another 4-5 weeks. That sounds pretty bad, until you flip over to the listing for the 8GB Nexus 4. According to the Play Store, new 8GB Nexus 4 orders will ship in 8-9 weeks. That means if you buy an 8GB Nexus 4 today, you can expect it to ship out around the end of January.

Those wait times are cringe-inducing, but at least Google is still selling the phone. For a few weeks after the phone launched, you couldn't even order one, and Google's stock situation was so dire that it had to delay some of the orders made on launch day by three weeks. Who knew that a phone with an excellent price tag and some solid internals would sell so incredibly well?

Indeed, we liked the time we spent with the Nexus 4 quite a bit, so it's not hard to imagine why it's in such high demand. If you've been thinking of picking up a Nexus 4 now that they're back in stock, it kind of goes without saying that you should make your decision soon, otherwise it might be spring by the time your order finally ships. Check out our story timeline below for more on the Nexus 4.