Using Google Play in Asia?

[Mai72]

I'm leaving for Thailand in a few weeks. I have ebooks thru Google Play Books. I'm worried that DRM is going to be an issue for me when I'm overseas. I don't know if this will be true though.

I'm also going to be in South Korea in a few months.

Will I be able to use:

Google Play
Google Books
Google Music

 

[Anubis]

im in Taiwan right now, things seem to be working fine for me. not sure why they would not TBH. as long as you get a data connection you should be fine

 

[cronos]

One potential exception is when a particular feature does not exist/allowed in the region where you will be at, then you may lose that feature. An example for this is a new feature that is trickling through the regions when it was first added.

I remember when Google Play Books first started allowing us to upload our own books and this feature was available in the US but not in Asia. A friend of mine gave me his Google login/password to test. I was able to upload this random epub I had and opened it on Play Books without a problem, but as soon as he logged in from his region, that book immediately disappeared from his account.

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

I think if your'e setup in the US, then its ok. I can only back Anubis' claims as I was in Taiwan before and it worked. I did not get a chance to try in China, Hong Kong, and Japan. Thailand being less developed and all I might have some concerns if Google didn't set things up in the country yet.

 

[Anubis]

all worked fine for me in the Japan airport over wifi at least

 

[v-600]

I'm in Nepal at the moment. I think most of the issues are tied to the account, rather than the location in my experience, though the book issue seems opposite to what I've found.

I have my own nexus 4, bought in the UK, tied into my personal gmail account, and linked with my UK credit card. I have never found anything I couldn't do on google play here, that I could do in England. We also have work tablets tied into accounts created in Nepal.

If I log into the play store on my own device and my own account I can get the full range of services. If I log in with my work account on my own device, I lose everything except the app store. Ditto for logging into the website on a computer. The main services not related to the play store that don't work here are things like location tracking and google now (which kind of relies on location).

I also wiped and reinstalled android on my personal nexus. When I logged in to my own personal account here, I lost google now. I didn't check the play store, but assume it might also have been limited. I found out that some services are turned on per device when its first set up, and the way round that was to spoof the GPS location, and unlink all my google accounts, then reconnect them with the fake gps running.