Google Play is rolling out and given the awesome features it has gathered into one place. Well, it’s actually Google Market store, but they’re kind of re-branding it into Google Play. It’s becoming more and more interesting to get some apps from that marketplace.
The issue is that for some applications, if you are based in China, they just don’t show up in the search results, or you just can’t download and install them. Therefore, you need to find a way to unlock Google Play.
Unlock Google Play with a VPN service
So there are multiple options that you can try out: but let’s see how a VPN solution can be used. For this example, let’s use HideMyAss (in fact, you could use another VPN solution like ibVPN or PureVPN, but it’s just that I need to refer to one solution).
HideMyAss can be interesting in such a way that they provide you a 30-day money-back guarantee. This gives you some kind of insurance that they are trustworthy enough. From the HideMyAss package, you can get a UK or US or Netherlands-based IP address: this is what you want to get for installing and running applications like Skype or Spotify from your China-based Android device. Now, it’s your call to choose if you want to directly go for a one-year contract, or if you want to choose the three months contract.
Access Google Play from China
So from here, you can do one of the following:
- either directly configure the VPN from your Android device: this is the most obvious way of doing things. HideMyAss has a good setup howto document for configuring it on an Android device. Moreover, we’ve covered it on some how-to-hide-ip articles.
- or configure the VPN on one of your computer (that is running the VPN), have the applications installed from Google Play then have Google Play automatically install the same application on the Android device that you own (that you should have added to your Google Play account)
Please note that you only have to use this VPN workout for some specific applications that aren’t available in China. Anyway, since it’s easy installing a VPN on your Android device, and since it is cheap, why not use it for some other purposes like playing online games with your Google Plus friends, or listen to music that some of your Google Plus friends would have shared with you. Those are new horizons that you can open once you use a VPN solution with your China-based android device.
Conclusion
As you would see, being based in China doesn’t mean that you can’t access all the internet resources that are available to some other users. You just need to have the right tools and know-how to use them. One of the major tools that you should consider when unlocking Google Play is the use of a VPN solution. As I told earlier, I chose HideMyAss for this case, but you could also use another VPN solution (ibVPN has great solutions too).
P.S: I’ve been told that there’s another way around this issue if you are in China: all you have to do is put a US-based SIM (or UK-based, or whichever non-blocked country) into your Android Phone, then just connect through Wi-Fi (not 3G or anything else). I haven’t personally tested it, so if some of the readers could test it from China and tell us the result, that would be nice 🙂
Hey, thanks for sharing this tip. However, surfing the web through a VPN with an android phone does not get access to Google Apps.
Although access to the Google Play website is possible, you still need to connect your Gmail account to Google Play from the phone, to download the apps. But it seems on my phone (LG C660), the Google Play application – which I installed from a third-party website- does not launch. Despite the VPN and despite my Gmail email account installed on my phone, the application cannot make the connection with the email account.
So the problem is really internal: Google Play just won’t work on a my phone. 🙁
And I don’t want to root my phone (only got it a few days ago)… T_T