I have been very interested in Google Wallet since it as announced but very disappointed that the roll out of the product appears to be very very slow with only a couple of devices supported.
Today I had had enough and in an effort to get the thing going for me here in Australia proceeded to do some “work” on my Nexus S that is now running ICS 4.0.4.
Step 1
Get Wallet installed on the phone.
There is a way you can get it on your phone without side loading but geees is it involved and basically requires you to try loading it in the app stpre then somehow foolin the thing to get it by using the web browser. It all a bit long winded but it does work.
Step 2
Unlock the phone.
Using fastboot you must first “unlock” the booloader which has a couple of consequences not lest of which it wipes everything, data on SD card stprage – everything so mack sure you backup your apps and then back up the SD Storage to your PC as after unlocking its all gone. The other consequence is that it factory resets as well so you need to set the phone up again including APN if you are using non standard one.
Step 3
Again using Fastboot flash the TWRP reovery image. Which, among other things allows you to do the next step
Step 4
Install Superuser
Save Superuser to your phones storage and using TWRP while in recovery mode install/run the superuser script.
Step 5
Install Market enabler
This will allow you to spoof a US mobile carrier which then will allow you to start up Google Wallet butthis is where it get tricky.
The issue
To run Google Wallet you have to spook a US mobile carrier, to do this you need Market Enabler but to run market enabler you must root the phone and here is the issue, Google Wallet will not allow you to creat a Google Pre-Paid card using a device that has been rooted.
So there you go kiddies, rooting your phone to take advantage of Market Enabler almost gets you what you want but you are ultimatley thwarted by the fact that you have rooted your phone.
My advise – be patient and wait/see if Google Wallet is released to the massess – till then unless you are living in the USA it may be a waste of time, let along the issues you are likely to face to be able to associate aything but a USA credit card to the prepaid card.
If anyone has a more clever idea which gets around this whole issue let me know.
“Google Wallet will not allow you to creat a Google Pre-Paid card using a device that has been rooted”
Not really – I live outside the US, and I was able to create a pre-paid card on a rooted device. However, it (the Wallet app) does say that rooted devices are unsupported.
The bad news – you need a card registered to an actual US address in order to top-up the Google pre-paid card. So… yeah, you’re right when you say “don’t bother” 🙂
Hi there!.
Did you create the pre-paid card on G-wallet before the great hacking problems (where someone wrote some code to find the G-wallet PIN)? If so then I can see that working, now days, you can’t even create the pre-paid card…
Well, it has been a long day to get Google Wallet loaded up … I tend to agree with the title, almost not worth it, but I do believe I accomplished getting it to work outside the U.S. I am in Australia and I finally have it loaded up without any errors and have my $10 credit to test tomorrow!
Without going into the detail – mostly because my head would explode at this point if I had to document all the specifics – I had to root my phone, then use market enabler to spoof my carrier, then download a modified version of Wallet APK found below with instructions, then had to download a file explorer utility, then figure out how to change the file explorer settings so I could see the root and all the files and follow his instructions for loading the app behind the scenes so it will not fail an install check or whatever it’s called, then register the Google prepaid card.
So, being a former techie, I agree that this is not for the faint hearted who do not already have a rooted phone or want to root it for other reasons. Frankly I am pretty amazed it all worked out and appears to be good to go. But, it is actually still possible!!
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1801324
On the downside, not so sure how secure it all is with all the rooting and modifications. It seems like it is all legit, but would be a lot easier for Google to just allow people in other countries to use it at their own risk.
Sorry for late reply to your comment – thanks by the way.
Google recently released a new Wallet app which apparently has the card detail in the “cloud”. I tried using it after I “upgraded” but at my local handy mart the same old “enter PIN” on the shop terminal would prevent a purchase – same a my local McDonalds.
In any event – around that time my phone was upgraded to Jelly Bean and now I don’t have root and so Market Enabler won’t work – bugger it – one day it’ll work in Oz without all the hackage.