Android tablets are pretty much dead at this point with even Google shifting attention to its Chrome OS-running Pixel Slate. However, Barnes & Noble has just come out this week to unveil a brand new affordable Android tablet with the Nook 10.1″.
Tablets are a slowly dying form factor, but for many, a cheap tablet is a fantastic option for getting things done on the go or just consuming media. Not everyone wants to spend hundreds on a tablet, though.
About a year ago, Amazon stepped in to fix that problem by debuting a 7-inch Android tablet that cost just $50, and wasn’t just total crap. However, there were still some big caveats aside from the specs. The tablet ran fine and the software was OK, but its performance degraded over time and the lack of the Google Play Store was a pain.
Then, things all changed when Barnes and Noble, seemingly out of thin air, introduced the NOOK 7, another small Android tablet with Google Play, decent specs, and a price tag of just $50. I’ve spent the past couple of weeks testing it out, and I’ve been pretty impressed.
Earlier today we showed you the Barnes and Noble NOOK 7″, a new competitor to Amazon’s popular $50 Fire Tablet. So far, we’re pretty impressed with what we’re seeing, but as we dig in further, we’re finding more and more about this tablet that continues to make us ask the question: how is this only $50?
Over the past couple of years, tablets have become less and less relevant. The form factor which once offered a great entry point into the world of Android has since been replaced with fantastic smartphones which are getting larger and much, much cheaper. Then, Amazon changed the game with its $50 Fire Tablet, which for the price, was passable. However, that cheap tablet’s biggest flaw (of many) was the lack of Google Play. That’s where the NOOK 7″ looks to improve.
With the NOOK, Barnes & Noble was one of the earliest companies with an eReader and large collection of eBooks. While the bookseller stopped most internal hardware development a few years back, B&N still partners with Samsung to release NOOK-branded devices. The latest is an affordable Galaxy Tab A NOOK available for only $139.
Last year, Samsung and Barnes & Noble introduced the lower-end Samsung Galaxy Tab 4 Nook, and just last month the same companies partnered to launch the Galaxy Tab S2 Nook on the other end of the spectrum. Today, Barnes & Noble has announced that there’s now a Samsung Nook offering that joins the two halfway: the Galaxy Tab E Nook…
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Earlier this year, Samsung teamed up with Barnes & Noble to release a 7-inch Galaxy Tab 4 Nook and today the duo has joined forces again, announcing a 10.1-inch variant of the tablet. With the exception of its larger display, this super-sized device’s specs are almost identical to its predecessor’s.
Barnes & Noble has teamed up with Samsung for its latest Nook to compete in the ebook reader+tablet space where Amazon’s Kindle Fire exists. The two companies first announced plans for the new device earlier this year in June, and teased the device in a video shared last Friday.
So what is the Samsung Galaxy Tab 4 Nook? Aside from a mouthful of words, it’s the same 7-inch Samsung Galaxy tablet introduced earlier this year with a splash of B&N’s software on the surface. That means the Nook now sports a 1,280-by-800 resolution display, 8GB of internal storage with a microSD card slot for expansion up to 32GB, both front and back cameras (1.3 megapixel on the front, 3 megapixel on the back), and the library of apps Google Play introduces.
It’s not a bad deal either if you’re in the market for an ebook reader and tablet. The Samsung Galaxy Tab 4 Nook will be sold online and in Barnes & Noble stores in both black and white for $199, and B&N is taking 10% off the top at launch bringing the price to $179 for early adopters. The new Nook also comes with loads of content from Barnes & Noble including books, TV shows, and magazines as part of the deal. Check below for the latest video and the full press release…
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[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6A0c6djpd8E]
We’ve known since June that Barnes & Noble’s next Nook ebook reader would be a co-branded Galaxy Tab 4, set to be launched on Wednesday. Digital Reader notes that the company has now emailed out a 30-second teaser video, showing reactions to the device – including one from Grumpy Cat …
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A little over two months ago, Samsung and Barnes & Noble announced that the next Nook e-reader would be a co-branded Galaxy Tab 4. Today, both companies began sending out invitations to a media event on August 20th that will take place in New York City. The two organizations will use this gathering as a platform to show off the next generation of Nook hardware, while further discussing their partnership.
There will be some nervous faces in Amazon’s headquarters as Google today partners with rival booksellers Barnes & Noble to extend the Google Shopping Express service to books, reveals the New York Times.
Starting on Thursday, book buyers in Manhattan, West Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area will be able to get same-day deliveries from local Barnes & Noble stores through Google Shopping Express, Google’s fledgling online shopping and delivery service …
Barnes & Noble has announced that its next Nook ebook reader will be a co-branded Galaxy Tab 4.
The co-branded devices will combine popular Samsung Galaxy Tab 4 hardware with customized NOOK software to give customers powerful, full-featured tablets that are designed for reading …
If you’re in the UK and have been considering a Nook, it looks like now is the time to buy: Barnes & Noble has cut prices again “while stocks last.”
Prices of the 7-inch Nook HD have been cut by £20, with the 8GB model down to £79 and the 16GB version at £99. The 9-inch HD+ sees a £30 drop to £129 for the 16GB and £149 for the 32GB.
9to5Toys recently had the 16GB HD+ for $110 shipped, but this has now sold out.
The Nook line has always been a loss-maker for Barnes & Noble, and the company said back in June that it was quitting the hardware business. The company then announced a change of plan after new CEO Michael Huseby was installed (not the first time the company has done a U-turn), though it’s not yet known whether the new Nook device expected later this year will be a dedicated ebook reader or another Android tablet.
Just two short months ago, Nook manufacturer Barnes & Noble was telling the world that it was moving out of the tablet business and focusing on content. Now it appears the company is scrapping that new strategy and going full-speed ahead with their original plans (memories of Netflix’s Qwikster plans are brought to mind).
Although the Nook business has been hurting Barnes & Noble’s bottom line since its inception – and the revenue continues to decline – CNET is reporting that B&N president today stated the company “intends to continue to design and develop cutting-edge Nook black and white and color devices” and one new Nook will be launched before the end of the year.
With the company losing nearly $87 million in the last quarter and lack of CEO (former CEO William Lynch resigned back in June and the company isn’t currently looking for a successor) paints a sad picture for the ailing company.
Photo: slashgear.com
Nook HD and HD+ owners will now be able to download content from Google Play after Barnes & Noble reversed its previous position of limiting app downloads to its own service (via Engadget).
Barnes & Noble had previous justified its locked-down approach on the basis of quality-control. The new policy allows Nook owners to download not just apps but also books, magazines and movies from Google Play …
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Barnes & Noble is optimistic for Nook devices this year, and to help along sales the company is offering discounts on all models with subscriptions to The New York Times or People (via TechCrunch).
Through this limited-time offer, customers will have access to the NOOK edition of The New York Times, plus all their favorite content on the go, through Barnes & Noble’s critically acclaimed devices. In addition to automatically delivering The Times directly to the customers’ NOOK device each day, NOOK subscribers will also receive unlimited access to The Times’ award-winning website, NYTimes.com, including regular news updates, opinions, blogs, video, interactive graphics and more. The NOOK subscription to The New York Times is $19.99 per month for full digital access on NOOK and NYTimes.com.
B&N announced the $99 Nook Simple Touch would be available completely free for users who purchase a one-year subscription to The New York Times. As for the Nook Color (usually $199), NYT subscribers will be able to pick it up for $99. The full-access NYT subscription currently costs $19.99/monthly.
The Nook Tablet, which usually retails for $249, will be available for $199 to users who sign up for a $9.99/montly, one-year People subscription. The promotion is running through March 9, 2012 at more than 700 Barnes & Nobile locations and at www.nook.com/nyt. The entire press release is available after the break:
Barnes & Noble reported record holiday sales today for its Nook business, including devices and digital content.
“During the nine-week holiday period ending Dec. 31, 2011, Nook unit sales, including Nook Simple Touch, Nook Color and the new Nook Tablet, increased 70 percent over the same period last year,” said the bookseller in a Jan. 5 statement. “Digital content sales also grew briskly during the same nine-week period, increasing 113 percent on a comparable basis.”
Content sales include digital books, digital newsstand, and the company’s apps business. The retailer of digital media and educational products is doing so well, as of lately, it is even considering a spinoff.
The company announced on Thursday it is embarking on a “strategic exploration” to separate the Nook division. The retailer also wants to report Nook-related sales as a separate business segment, and it is communicating with potential partners to expand the Nook’s presence abroad…
Plex, the very popular streaming media application, is on its way to the Nook Color and Nook Tablet’s Store, reports GigaOm. For those unfamiliar with Plex, it is a popular application available on iOS and Android that lets users manage their home’s media content through a custom server.
Plex’s wide variety of supported media formats, available plug-ins, and the Windows and Mac application make it arguably the best solution for controlling media across the household. The Barnes and Noble review team approved Plex, so it should see its way onto the Nook Store in the coming days.
The Nook’s Plex app will be very close to the Android app, but it will have an added layer of approval process for software titles, GigaOm reports.
The Nook Color and Nook Tablet’s popular competitor, the Kindle Fire, also has Plex. The addition of Plex to the Nook Store will give customers the ability to better manage their media — something that customers love to do with their cheaper tablets.
When Barnes & Noble unveiled the new Android-powered Nook Tablet, it was clear it would be a Kindle Fire competitor and not necessarily compete in the broader tablet market. Well we already learned earlier this month that Amazon is set to ship around four million units by the end of 2011, but despite that the Nook Tablet is also posting strong numbers with DigiTimes reporting the company has shipped a million units since launch.
Barnes & Noble should have so far taken delivery of one million units of Nook Tablet PCs from OEM production partners… The market had originally expected Barnes & Noble to pull in orders for 800,000 Nook Tablet PCs before year-end 2011, indicated the sources, adding that the increased orders from Barnes & Noble has strengthened Inventec’s position in the OEM tablet PC segment.
At the beginning of December, research firm IHS iSuppli expected Amazon to take estimated 13.8 perfect share of the global tablet market. At that time, the report had Barnes & Noble at 4.7 percent of the market in comparison to Amazon’s 13.8%. These numbers were of course before we learned the Kindle Fire’s initial shipment numbers today. DigiTimes contributes the increased shipments due to strong sales of the Kindle Fire during the Thanksgiving shopping holiday and in anticipation of the upcoming Christmas holidays. Barnes & Noble could potentially begin to close the gap depending on how it performs against the Kindle Fire in the coming weeks.
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The guys and gals over at iFixit are once again tearing down our favorite electronic devices, this time the new Nook Tablet from Barnes & Noble. The end result is a repairability score of 6 out of 10 and a few interesting findings, especially in comparison to the Kindle Fire. Today we also get our first root for the device, allowing the Android Market to run with some minor limitations. Liliputing (via SlashGear) has compiled a complete guide using tips from various posters on Xda-developers.
A few noteworthy findings that you may have previously be unaware of include:
Storage– While Barnes & Noble advertises 16GB of onboard internal storage (saying the 6GB included in Amazon’s Kindle Fire makes it “deficient for a media tablet”), the truth is only 1GB is available for content other than B&N content. iFixit says only 12GB of the 16GB is actually available to the user, while only 1GB of that 12 is available for content other than that downloaded from the B&N app store. Looks like the majority of your content (other than content purchased from B&N) will have to be stored mostly on microSD.
We also get a nice comparison of the Nook Tablet and Kindle Fire. iFixit explains:
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Ever wonder what patents Microsoft has been using to sign up Android vendors such as Samsung, HTC, Huawei, Acer, and over 10 others in cross-licensing agreements? Just last week Barnes & Noble asked US regulators to probe Microsoft’s anti-Android strategy, which sees the company collecting millions in profits from royalties paid by just about anyone shipping Android on their devices.
In their initial letter to the Department of Justice, Barnes & Noble claims Microsoft’s patents “cover only arbitrary, outmoded and non-essential design features,” and today we get a look into exactly what they’re talking about thanks to a detailed report from Groklaw of the exhibits attached to B&N’s letter.
Below B&N walks us through some of the patents Microsoft claims the Nook infringes on and also describes their stance for each. These could very well be some of the same patents the company is using to collect royalties from other Android vendors, patents B&N describe as only covering “trivial and non-essential design elements in Android”.
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The Nook Color is getting a $50 price slash, which brings the e-reader tablet to $199 — Android Central found today. Along with the price slash the Nook Color will be receiving a new software update 1.4 that brings Hulu Plus and the music streaming services Rhapsody, MOG, and Grooveshark to the tablet. All of the music streaming apps come with free trials, and Pandora also comes pre-loaded.
With the price slash, the Nook Color is a certain buy for the upcoming holiday season and it also comes in at a nice Kindle Fire competitor. But how about the Nook Tablet?
The Digital Reader published “some juicy insider info” claiming that Barnes & Noble will be issuing a new Nook Color model next month:
All the unsubstantiated rumors had come out of Asia, so I wasn’t sure that I should take them seriously. I did, but that was only because B&N have been clearing out the refurbished units at a decent discount. And until today the unsubstantiated rumors were all I had.
A source told the blog that Barnes & Noble held a meeting last week related to marketing plans for the device. One of the slides allegedly mentions four Barnes & Noble devices next quarter, one of them being a tablet. The four devices are the Smart Touch with a price tag of $139, the Nook Color, the $249 Encore and the $349 Acclaim. The latter two are supposedly tablets, with the Encore likely being a seven-inch model. The blog claims the Acclaim tablet “is the Android tablet that GameStop are currently beta-testing”.
Barnes & Noble’s all-new Nook e-reader is now shipping. The company announced via a press release yesterday that the new Nooks have been shipped to those who pre-ordered them. New orders placed via their website will ship immediately, in time for Father’s Day. The device will also be in stock at Barnes & Noble locations. The e-reader features a six-inch display with the latest E-Ink Pearl display technology that responds to touch input. It also surprises with other noteworthy goodies…
