Barnes & Noble Has Been Quietly Refreshing Its Nook Hardware

itwbennett writes: Peter Smith writes that he 'had more or less written off the Nook when Barnes & Noble farmed hardware duties out to Samsung.' But now that Amazon is aiming for the low end with its downgraded Fire tablet line, Barnes & Noble has an opportunity to 'carve out a niche on the higher end of things,' says Smith. And so it has been quietly moving in that direction. Yesterday, Venture Beat wrote about the newly (and stealthily) launched $250 Samsung Galaxy Tab E Nook. As Smith notes, 'the specs for this new tablet aren't anything special,' which might explain the stealthy launch, except that another, pricier Nook tablet apparently came out a month ago (again, according to VentureBeat), the Samsung Galaxy Tab S2 Nook.

Apparently?

[Anonymous Coward]

We can't double check the veracity of press releases anymore? Just feign incredulity and link an external source to be done with it?

Re:

[0123456]

No. For Amazon it's about tying people into their media infrastructure.

They don't need the Kindle for books, because just about every device has a Kindle app. They want to get cheap Kindles out there, so people then buy movies and music and books and games and... lots of other stuff from Amazon. And I see you're buying a movie, did you know can can subscribe for only $99.99 a month and get free access to everything?

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it's an anti-trust situation. Amazon controls roughly 90% of the ebook market and has been able to force people to buy Kindles if they want to have an ereader that can use the book. It's completely illegal to use ones size to harm the competition. Same goes for when Apple was using the ITMS to exclude the competition.

Those were clear cut cases of antitrust violations and the DoJ under Bush wasn't enforcing antitrust law, so it wasn't being enforced. Apple got to the point it is now, largely because the

I never had a problem with their hardware

[taustin]

I gave up on B&N when they became actively hostile to their own users. Removing download links for epubs, playing games to keep you from getting it any other way, changing from their "social encryption" to randomly generated keys, all for the specific purpose of making it impossible to keep an archive of your purchases, so that you have to rely on B&N to reload stuff if you replace a device (and you can only do so on their devices, or using their reader). All while losing hundreds of millions of dollars, and looking like their were going out of business any day now. Fuck 'em.

I hate Amazon's business model on ebooks, but it's still better than B&N shitting all over me.

Re:

[unixisc]

If it is an Android, can't its stuff be uploaded to your Google Drive? Also, my main beef has been most of these tablets just having 8GB of internal storage and costing $50+. I'm waiting for the first tablet that has Marshmallow, so that I can put in any external SD card and configure it as internal, which Marshmallow allows

Re:

[cdrudge]

I can't speak for the more recent tablets, but the early Nook android tablets were locked down using their firmware and their store. You could sideload, but it was a PITA unless you replaced their firmware with a 3rd party firmware.

Re:

[RabidReindeer]

Back around May, the Nook software shifted the (previously-visible) book files to a directory that could only be read by rooting the device.

Like virtually all B&N software updates, there was nothing said. Their idea of an update bulletin tends to be on the order of "some small changes were made to the Nook software".

Re:

[david_thornley]

If you have an Android tablet, get the Nook app. I don't think they can hide the files then.

Re:

[Obfuscant]

If you have an Android tablet, get the Nook app. I don't think they can hide the files then.

Bzzzzt. Wrong. Thanks for playing the DRM game brought to you by Barnes & Noble, fine booksellers.

Sorry, that's just how really pathetic B&N are at customer relations. The latest Nook app for Android does not keep the content as files anywhere the normal user can find them. It keeps them IN THE APP. Yes, truly, when I updated to the latest app, the app grew to 150MB in size and the files for each book or magazine that were in someplace I could get them were gone. Vanished.

Not only that, but IIRC

Re:

[david_thornley]

Oh, rats. I hadn't tried it yet, and I was hoping.

Re:

[RabidReindeer]

changing from their "social encryption" to randomly generated keys, all for the specific purpose of making it impossible to keep an archive of your purchases, so that you have to rely on B&N to reload stuff if you replace a device (and you can only do so on their devices, or using their reader).

I didn't like that either. It's not like I'm cracking books and handing them out on the street corners, but if they ever do a "Borders" - go defunct (and it's a rough business) - and turn off their servers, a thousand dollars of "purchases" would evaporate overnight. Physically, the files would still exist, but practically, they'd be random bits at that point.

The other thing I don't like is that they keep "hiding" their downloaded books, so even with a key, you can only find them if you root the device.

Sinc

Wot no Eink?

[Anne Thwacks]

If it does not have eink and a battery life in months, surely it is not actually an eBook? Its just an also-ran tablet with an app. I have one of those already.

I am a nerd.

I want a black and white screen 1280x1024, with a physical keyboard and some type of navigation.

Sure I could use it to read "catch 22", but the real world use is to have all the service manuals and wiring diagrams where I can take them on site and use them. paper ones need a couple of drawing cabinets (bigger than 4-draw filing cabinets), and colour displays time out just when you are managing to finally figure out whether it was the blue/green wire or the green/blue wire that deactivates the detonator.

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[iampiti]

I'm sure you're aware of larger eink based ereaders. There're some with 9,7 inch screens and those are pretty nice for information-dense PDFs. They're something like 1200x800 in resolution, and their size it's still too small to read dense A4 PDFs, but they're certainly much better than the 6 inch readers.
I have an Onyx M92 and it supports a nice number of formats (EPUB, PDF, cbz, even Excel and Word) but that's old and I'm sure there're much better models by now.

Re:

[nabsltd]

I have an Onyx M92 and it supports a nice number of formats (EPUB, PDF, cbz, even Excel and Word) but that's old and I'm sure there're much better models by now.

Nope, there's nothing better in the 9-10" e-ink category.

I have the same reader and have been looking for something new because the poor HTML support on the reader app means I have to manually edit every book so it looks correct, because they all use the features (drop caps, embedded fonts, etc.) available on the Kindle.

Color E-Ink?

[camperdave]

Is it waterproof, color, full-sunlight readable, rapid transition, low power, e-ink technology? Or is it simply some crippled tablet?

Almost as good as the 2013 Nook HD+

[Gim Tom]

I got a Nook HD+ in 2013 and have never run the Nook OS on it. I am now running the Cyanaogen vs of KitKat and except for the GPS stuff I don't see what these new Nooks do any better and probably some things worse. My first question is, can you ROOT them?

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[swv3752]

The new nooks are just Samsung tablets with some Nook software. So whatever you could do with the base Samsung table you can still do.

The reason to buy the nook tablet, is a) cheaper or b) for the non-tech savy: lifetime support.

I hope they do and suceed

[btroy]

Having used various models of the Nook (Eink (1st nook, nook touch), Tablet, HD, HD+), I love their stuff. The first edition of Samsung devices (larger screen ones) were a down step from the HD+ which was simply beautiful.. You talk about lock in, etc. The device was built for average folks (not us geeks that frequent this site). I've watched my wife and kids use the devices and frankly, for the target market of readers and tablet games, etc. The devices have been great. I personally use a Nook Touch

Every day

[The-Ixian]

I am a little closer to moving entirely to Amazon.

I started with a Nook. At the time, the Kindle did not have a touch interface and I liked the screen size and back light of the Nook.

Fast forward several years and mysterious B&N charges that show up and cause holds on my funds that drop off after a week coupled with really poor touch screen performance and no Windows mobile app and I am about ready to call it.

I really love the e-ink for reading and for battery life so the notion of going with a crippled

Wait a second...

[JohnFen]

Barnes & Noble still exists???