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B&N Releases Nook Tablet To Rival Amazon Fire

jfruhlinger writes "It looks like there's competition in the low-cost media tablet space — and that Barnes & Noble is determined not to go the way of Borders. Barnes & Noble today announced the Nook Tablet, an Android-based tablet with better specs than the Kindle Fire (though it's also $50 pricier). The Nook Tablet will allow Hulu and Netflix streaming and sideloading of content, but won't have access to the general-purpose Android App Store."

13 of 183 comments (clear)

  1. And in other -- er, actually, the same -- news... by sootman · · Score: 4, Informative

    ... the already-exisitng, easily-hackable previous Nook Color is now $50 less--just US$199. Nice! Very tempted...

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  2. Re:So worse than the current nook? by Andy+Dodd · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Um, comparing a third-party firmware for the original Nook with the stock features of this new one isn't valid.

    The better question is - Assuming that they don't lock the bootloader this time around, what will this new device be like with CM9?

    If I didn't already have a Tab 10.1, I'd go for this... If the flexibility of this device is even close to that of its predecessor, it's going to be a beast with CM9. (It may get CM7 in the interim, but that's probably only going to be short-term.)

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  3. Re:And in other -- er, actually, the same -- news. by roc97007 · · Score: 3, Informative

    And unlike the Kindle Fire, the Nook Color has an SD card slot.

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  4. Android app store is a deal-breaker by roc97007 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Without access to the Android app store, it's not much different than the higher end Chinese clones.

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  5. Someone gets it! by roc97007 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    From TFA:

    > [the kindle fire]'s 8G bytes of storage is not enough to hold media for those situations where the user is not connected to the Internet. "You're not always going to be connected to the cloud," he said.

    All together now: Bingo!

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  6. Re:Just One Question: by ickpoo · · Score: 4, Informative

    I chatted with the Barnes and Nobles sales guy via their website and asked that same question. They said it will be rootable. (Gave me the warning about voiding warranty). So, I'm guessing that it is, although the sales guy is likely ignorant and just repeating what he has heard.

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  7. Re:Color e-ink display? by AdamJS · · Score: 3, Informative

    What?
    You can add a near-instant capacitive touch interface to a color (only 30FPS/30Hz, but that still seems ok) E-Ink display just fine, though it darkens the screen a bit.
    A darn shame the tech hasn't been mass-produced though. No demand for it despite the clear battery life improvement.

  8. Re:Color e-ink display? by fafaforza · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Which color eInk display are you talking about, exactly? As far as I'm aware, there aren't any commercially available right now.

  9. Re:I don't see the advantage. by h4rr4r · · Score: 3, Informative

    Clock the old nook up to 1.2Ghz and flash is fine.

  10. Re:More market fragmentation. by Microlith · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Holy shit, choice! Competition!

    I never thought I'd see the day when people would whimper and cry because of it.

  11. Color E-ink by daenris · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Yay, a slight revision of the Nook Color... meh. Won't someone just release a color E-ink tablet already.

  12. Re:And in other -- er, actually, the same -- news. by Solandri · · Score: 5, Informative

    On top of that, the Nook Color is programmed to try to boot off the microSD card first. So "hacking" it is just writing a CM7 boot image to a microSD card, putting it in, and restarting the tablet. If you ever want to go back to the original Nook Color experience, just reboot it without the card.

    Any word on if the new Nook Tablet has the same feature?

  13. Re:Incidentally by Doc+Ruby · · Score: 3, Informative

    Really. 44.8% Android to 27.4% iPhone is already dwindled, but when the huge hype of the iPhone 4S release produces only a 0.1% increase in market share, the months after initial release will doubtless show further dwindle.

    The much smaller market segment that is tablets also shrank, from 75% to 67% iPad, while Android's share grew to 27%. The iPad lead is dwindling, and by the time tablets are as substantial a market segment as are smartphones, the iPad share's further shrinkage in the minority will contribute to the overall dwindling of Apple's share.

    Apple is a great innovator, and a terrific survivor. But the company has never been much of a sustainer of market share. The diversity of large markets works against the total platform control that Apple always builds its products on, even as it helps Apple's kind of mass market but quality innovations and its tenacious survival. The middle phase is where most of the money is, and Microsoft and now Google (and its partners, the further development of the Microsoft corollary) come to dominate most of the time by owning it through relative openness.

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