It seems that every major retailer that focuses on selling e-books has developed their own e-reader device to go along with them. Considering that billions of dollars worth of e-books are bought each year, who can blame them? Amazon, who sells the majority of the world’s e-books, has their successful Kindle line of devices. Not to be outdone, Barnes & Noble, who has the largest chain of retail bookstores in the U.S, sells their own Nook e-reader. The Nook has seen several updates and variations since it was first released in 2009 and now, according to sources within the company, Barnes & Noble is slowly beginning to release the latest Nook variant into its retail locations.
Prior to now, the most recent iteration of the Nook was released just two short months ago and was the inaugural device from a partnership between Barnes & Noble and Samsung, the South Korean electronics giant whose phones and tablets have taken the world by storm. This device was the Galaxy Tab 4 Nook and was, essentially, your regular Samsung tablet with all the usual bells and whistles but with Barnes & Noble’s Nook software included. It ran Android 4.4.2 and had a 7″ LCD display with a 1200 x 800 resolution, a 1.2 Ghz quad-core Snapdragon SOC, 1.5 GB of Ram and featured a 3 MP rear camera and a 1.2 MP front facing shooter. In terms of internal storage it had 8 GB available but featured a microSD slot for up to 32 GB of expandable storage. WiFi and Bluetooth connectivity were also included.
As of this week, however, demo units of the latest version of the Galaxy Tab 4 Nook have begun to appear in Barnes & Noble stores. This newest variation will be identical in specs to the one released this past August with the exception of a bump in screen size to 10″ as opposed to 7″ and a jump to 16 GB of available internal storage. A larger screen will not mean higher resolution, unfortunately, as the 10″ device will feature the same 1200 x 800 resolution as its baby brother. The 10″ Galaxy Tab 4 Nook will weigh 487 grams and have a thickness of just 8mm.
Barnes & Noble has taken a curious approach to their initial marketing of this latest device, however, as they are giving only educators the chance to see these demo units that are now in stores and giving these same people the first crack at pre-orders. For everyone else who might be interested, reports indicate that the device will ship to stores on October 22nd and will feature a $299 price tag.