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Barnes & Noble Announces A New $50 Android Tablet (teleread.org)
Next Friday Barnes & Noble will release a $50 Android tablet, competing against Amazon's tablets with a more-open version of Android.
Long-time Slashdot reader Robotech_Master writes: The specs are similar to slightly better than the $50 Fire, but the kicker is this tablet will ship with plain-vanilla Marshmallow Android 6.0 and the Google Play utilities -- unlike the Fire, which limits its users to only those apps Amazon deems suitable to offer. Might this be enough to rescue the ailing Nook brand?
If you truly care about your app ecosystem, this would at least save you the trouble of having to root your tablet just to install apps from the Google Play Store.
If you truly care about your app ecosystem, this would at least save you the trouble of having to root your tablet just to install apps from the Google Play Store.
Almost all android apps now want permissions to access things on your tablet that they have no business or need to access! What this amounts to is that almost all apps want to spy on you, and send your personal info to people who should definitely NOT have it!! In addition, almost all game apps now have ads in the paid versions, and to complete the game you need to make significant in-app purchases. This is just wrong!! After all, you have already paid for the game!!! On top of all of this, the tablet makers all expect you to buy a new tablet every year, so after the tablet is a year old, there are no security updates, even though the tablet still works just fine. All of the above applies to so called "smart" phones too! All of this kind of spying, money grubbing, and planned obsolescence makes it not worthwhile to even own a tablet any more!
The original Nook Color unofficially had bluetooth. Wifi is provided by the same chip and rooting it enabled this feature (though the range was truly pitiful). You may be able to do the same with the new tablet, but considering your needs, you're better off not buying a tablet from a bookstore company in the first place.
The problem was that their heart was never in it. Competing with a big company means taking big risks, and continuing to take big risks even when the numbers don't go up as quickly as you'd like them to. It means creating products that are innovative, and doing it on a regular cycle. And it means creating the perception that you stand behind your products and will continue to do so over the long term. B&N has completely failed at all of those things, and that's why we're all so shocked that they're even bothering to release a new model rather than dropping out of the e-Book business entirely.
At this point, B&N has been out of the hardware business for several years, with the possible exception of their E-ink model. Everything else is built by other companies. But even when they were still designing hardware, they kept shipping new hardware that didn't even run the latest version of Android on the day it shipped. Heck, their latest E-ink hardware was behind by two major versions on the day that it shipped. And AFAIK, they never update them to run current versions of the OS, so anybody who wants to stay reasonably current depends on third parties to hack together support. As a tablet, their products start out as crap and get further behind as they age.
If B&N really want to compete, they need to get serious, and make a pledge to always ship the current version of Android on all of their hardware. They need to provide OS updates for existing customers so that the products don't get farther and farther behind. Basically, they need to take the OS side of things seriously.
They also need to keep their RMSDK versions up-to-date so that book publishers won't keep having to cater to the most ancient devices with the oldest, most broken version of Adobe Digital Editions wrapped in a Nook UI.
They also need to make options available with faster hardware. I mean sure, there's something to be said about making a low-end device that they can build cheaply, but they ought to also have a step-up device that's a serious Android tablet with all the Nook-ization. Otherwise, people who want a tablet that's actually usable as a tablet will install Nook's Android app on a device from someone else, which means B&N loses not just market share, but also the psychological advantage of folks thinking of their devices as Nook tablets. As a result, they're more likely to also install the Kindle app, and they have less incentive to buy books from B&N.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
You may be able to do the same with the new tablet, but considering your needs, you're better off not buying a tablet from a bookstore company in the first place.
Well, I like cheap. I want something that I can lose or destroy without being sad about it. I don't plan to actually build it into the car or anything, just find a graceful way to temp mount it on the dash.
Come to think of it, I want OBD-II via bluetooth also. OBDLink LX supports KKL.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Amazon tying their well developed services to their tablet makes it a well developed media content device. For example I can search for music and make playlists all I want with my Prime Membership. It's playing in my shop all day. Being far from stock Android is a feature and I like Alexa. Granted, I can see why it would be useless without Prime. We'll see if BN can pull something off. Stock Android is a tight market.
Brought to you by Carl's Junior.
That all made perfect sense, as long as you ignore how the other big companies operate. I'm serious... that's the plan I'd say they should follow too, but that's not what the successful companies are doing.
... and that's why we're all so shocked that they're even bothering to release a new model rather than dropping out of the e-Book business entirely.
Who all is in the e-book business these days?
* amazon, obviously. They're probably #1
* apple ibooks. They have no e-ink reader, but their ibook users won't buy another device for reading cause they love their ithing so much. I consider this a niche market, because no other hardware/platform is really going to win those users.
* B&N. I'm 99% sure they are either #2 or #3, and I haven't looked at any stats.
* Kobo? Or free apps and 3rd party or pirated books? Or the other e-ink readers that are hard to even find?
Why would B&N exit a market where they're in the top 3? That's still a HUGE volume. Any of the others would LOVE to have that extra share. It's enough for them to manage a profit from it, and any bit that Amazon doesn't get makes them more competitive, so it's win-win to keep it.
B&N has been out of the hardware business for several years, with the possible exception of their E-ink model.
Good. IMO, they never should have made their own tablet. The e-ink reader is the book market, and they can make a nice app for any and all tablets (which they already have). The e-ink competition is amazon, and a bunch of also rans.
Heck, their latest E-ink hardware was behind by two major versions on the day that it shipped.
Amazon doesn't even run Android on their E-ink hardware.
On the Fire tablets, Amazon doesn't support the normal app ecosystem (no google play, no gmail, no chrome, no firefox, no hangouts, no chromecast support, etc). AFAICT, you can't even make a bookmark onto the home screen, so you can't make a shortcut to the web versions of things. I'm VERY upset about that, cause I tried to make that a drop in replacement for some elder family members (the live support and cheap price with decent specs sold me on them... these shortcomings were downplayed by everyone I talked to, but now the tablets are unused junk).
GP mentioned B&N being a threat to both Microsoft and Amazon. If you look at microsofts competition in this market, it's essentially non-existant. I don't think they ever even had an e-ink reader, and if they had a book store, it was so insignificant that no one knows about it. Their updates and maintenance on their product lines has been pretty awful, with the exception of windows itself, where they went with the other extreme.
My point is, using the others as a model, B&N doesn't need to be a good company and provide lots of great support. It's sad.
If B&N really want to compete, they need to get serious, and make a pledge to always ship the current version of Android on all of their hardware.
If they want to compete they need to find a market that is OK with 1024px screen resolution. Although to be fair, people who buy Amazon Fires probably don't know what that means.
No, your children are not the special ones. Nor are your pets.
It's a 50 dollar throw away tablet. I mean for 50 bucks you get a tablet that you actually can control what apps are on it. No more putting up with someone else idea of what software should be there. You get a slot for a 128gb micro sd card which now sell for less than 40 dollars. If you just want something to play with it's perfect. Ooops! I broke it! Oh well, no worries. What's not to like. I started to buy a Fire but when I saw Amazon crippled it I decided I didn't need something totally fucking useless. If your hardware is crippled with crapware you should be giving that shit away.
I'm extremely proud of setting the right example with this:
https://twitter.com/BramStolk/status/421750337750327296
In 2011, this was already a rare feat: two of the top100 apps pulled this off, including mine.
http://www.stolk.org/tlctc
Or get your apps from places like F-Droid, and you don't need a Google account or useless spyware apps.
"Go to CNN [for a] spell-checked, fact-checked summary" -- CmdrTaco