Barnes and Noble recently introduced price cutting on its tablet line, alongside the introduction of support for Google Play. Many feel the reason that this move was made was to be more competitive against other tablets including the Kindle Fire line, others say it is a way to push remaining stock before bowing out of the tablet game.

Now it looks like an internal document has surfaced suggesting that Nook is ending its involvement in creating Android-based tablets by 2014, instead looking to have partners create devices designed around Nook’s software and store. Additionally, the reports claim Microsoft is looking to take its investment in the Nook one step further, buying it out.

It’s really hard to say whether this is true or not, and if it is, what Microsoft plans to do with the Nook line. They could strongly integrate Nook services into their Windows 8 tablets, and they could also spin-off their own Nook-centric tablets.
If this happened, the tablets would probably run on some form of Windows 8 or Windows Embedded as opposed to Android, of course.

What do you think, if the rumor is true, should Microsoft buy Nook? Or should Nook continue to ride out its new strategy of aggressive pricing and Google Play support and see where that takes the company first? Let us know what you think in the comments below!

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If waiting for great deals on gadgets is the way you roll and if you are fond of doing a lot of shopping at Walmart, then you will be glad to hear about this new deal. They are offering a $70 e-gift card when you get a Nook HD+ tablet from Barnes & Noble.

Both the 16GB and 32GB models, which cost $269 and $299 respectively, are available. So if you are someone who frequently shops at Walmart, then the offer is giving you a chance to truly pay $199 or $229 for an impressive 8.9-inch tablet with a 1.5GHz dual-core processor (when you factor in the $70 card). Indeed it’s a great deal especially when we think about the 8-inch, lower-resolution iPad Mini starting at $329.

So, are you interested in the deal? It’s a great deal and a great tablet. If you are still not moved, maybe you probably went for the earlier deal. And certainly there is the possibility that all these Nook-related deals are pointing towards the arrival of new devices from Barnes & Noble. We will let you know when something new comes up. In the meantime, you can check out the Walmart product page here if you want to get in on the deal.

The post Barnes & Noble 16GB Nook HD+ Tablet for $199, Well Sort Of appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

In a press release Friday, Barnes and Noble announced that they would be having a special limited time offer on their tablets. More specifically, when you purchase a Nook HD+ between March 24, 2013, and March 31, 2013, you will also receive a free Nook Simple Touch E Ink reader, a $79 value.

The Nook HD+ will run you $269 and you can pick it up both of your new Nook tablets at any Barnes and Noble retail store or online at www.nook.com. If you are not familiar, the Nook HD+ comes with a 1.5Ghz dual-core processor, a 1920×1280 display, and 16GB (32GB @ $299) of storage. It’s counterpart, the Nook Simple Touch, has a 6-inch E Ink touchscreen and a battery life of up to 2 months on a single charge.

It is possible that Barnes and Noble is using this offer to clear out for a new line of devices. In fact, it’s been a while since we last heard from the book giant. And with Amazon’s fire finally cooling off after the holiday season, this could be Prime time for a new device.

Did you find the two Amazon puns? Will you be picking up a Nook HD+ and a Nook Simple Touch this week? Let us know in the comments below.

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The post Buy the Nook HD+ and Get a Free Nook Simple Touch For a Limited Time appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

When you combine this investment with the recent news that Microsoft is re-tooling its multimedia service, Zune, with a new Xbox-branded multi-platform music/video service, it starts to become clearer that Microsoft is pulling out all the stops to make sure they have as much content as possible when Windows 8 tablets hit the scene. Overall, this is just being smart on Microsoft’s part, after all, Apple has already established millions of apps and multimedia content, so Windows 8 will need all it can muster if it’s going to convince anyone to migrate from the iPad, or even an Android tablet, to their new ARM and x86 tablet devices.

As for why Barnes and Noble would find this partnership useful? Beyond the fact that they get a massive $300 investment? Separating its Nook line from its brick-and-mortar and non-digital book offerings might be a way the company can better appeal to more users and other markets internationally, at least according to Forrester analyst Sarah Rotman Epps.

Will the move prove to be a successful one for Microsoft against competitors like Apple and Google? Or for that matter, will it give B&N an edge over Amazon’s Kindle line? Only time will tell for sure.

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This latest Nook costs $139 and will become available in early May, though Barnes & Noble has started taking preorders on its website and in stores. Barnes & Noble isn’t making changes to the other Nook readers in its lineup, including the light-free but otherwise similar $99 E-Ink-based Nook Simple Touch reader.

A new war for lighted E-Ink displays has now began. You know, because turning on that lamp was so hard before. I suppose this could come in handy in certain situations like reading outdoors while camping, or just simply when you are out of reach from an easy reading lamp.

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The post New Nook Has A Front-Lit eInk Display, Shipping May appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

After tons of rumors about an iPad 3, what we really got, as you know, was the new iPad. So then will the iPad 3 still arrive sometime in the future? Is it in the works at the moment in a super secret Apple lab? Well, it appears like a new tablet, a smaller iPad, is indeed being tested by the company and it might get released later this year (maybe as the iPad 3 or iPad mini).

That’s according to Apple pundit John Gruber who was talking on The Talk Show, a podcast with 5by5′s Dan Benjamin. Gruber revealed that Apple is currently thinking about a smaller version of its iPad and has a 7.85-inch 1024×768 resolution iPad in their lab. According to him, the prototype device is “just like the 9.7-inch iPad shrunk down a little bit” and “the apps wouldn’t need to be redesigned or recompiled to work on it”.

Gruber says that he “wouldn’t be surprised if it never ships”, but suggests that Apple might introduce a smaller iPad at the Worldwide Developers Conference, since the arrival of a new iPhone is very unlikely. That device could compete against Amazon’s Kindle Fire and Barnes & Noble’s Nook Tablet. But there’s also a possibility that they might simply be testing new designs, and the said device may never see the light of day.

Yet, the thought about another new iPad for this year will make all the iFans excited. But, of course, even if such a device is being perfected for future release, we can’t say for sure what it will be named. iPad 3? iPad Mini? Newer iPad? Or maybe ePad?

The post iPad 3 Will Be The 7.85-Inch Mini? appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

It looks like more of a proof of a principle than anything useful for an ordinary NOOK Tablet user. ARM port of Ubuntu smaller distribution made by AdamOutler and Loglud of XDA-Developers’ fame runs on NOOK Tablet since December 9 already. Engadget seemed to notice it just the other day, and even now it looks like they missed the true significance of this development they covered.

Nobody out of AdamOutler, Loglud, and other developers for NOOK Tablet ever had the idea of porting a desktop Linux, Ubuntu, or not, for its own sake. Their task is the investigation of the ways it might take to circumvent a locked bootloader of NOOK Tablet that apparently loads only cryptographically “signed” stock kernel and other critical software. Locked firmware is nothing new in the world of smartphones’ firmware. Plenty of past developments for methods of circumventing rigid security measures was centered on successful compilation of 2ndInit, kexec and some other sophisticated hijacking tools that may open the path to running custom firmware on such a device. So far, attempts to run a non-signed custom kernel were not successful for many devices. On top of that, implementations of security measures are different and varying wildly for different devices, so the success of getting “customized” ROM on one type of Droid doesn’t necessarily mean other Droid models will also comply.

However, this demo for the proof of a concept inches just a tad closer to these developer’s target: it’s not Linux (Ubuntu) on NOOK Tablet they are dreaming of. It’s CyanogenMod 9 (Android 4.0.3 out of Android Open Source Project). One day, it could be webOS, who knows.

The post Ubuntu Running On NOOK Tablet appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

In this past year, tablets have dominated sales over e-readers. Estimates are made that Amazon Kindle Fire has sold over 2 million units, and Barnes & Noble has sold a million of its NOOK Tablet. Both vendors were also successful in selling their previous models at the discounted prices. However, you shouldn’t forget another very popular tablet — the HP Touchpad, fire sales of which were bringing over 700,000 tablets in the hands of eager customers. Then, as the numbers of RIM Blackberry Playbooks sold at similar numbers to HP’s Touchpad, the popularity of having a well rounded more powerful device has grown significantly.

From a buyers standpoint, it obviously didn’t matter whether all these portable WiFi internet devices of 7″ and 9.7″ varieties were actually marketed as tablets or e-book readers. What really mattered was the pricing of them ranging from $99 and $149 for a HP Touchpad (now can be had at around $200-$250 on eBay) through $199 for a Kindle Fire and 16 GB Blackberry Playbook, upwards to $249 for the NOOK Tablet. Looking at these price tags and comparing them to the sales numbers, it’s easy to understand that this season’s sweet spot for a 7″ tablet is around $199. In other words, if hardware makers are able to put a $199 price on their device they may sell twice as many as competitors with similar, even if a tad more powerful and versatile. Yet the overall preferences of customers spoiled by the August fire sale of HP Touchpads at $99 and $149 were definitely getting a great deal.

With three million users owning these tablets, birth to a small but very dynamic army of hackers was born. No-one can tell them that they can’t do this or that with their tablets only because the manufacturer said so. Popularity of Android and especially Android 4.0 (“Ice Cream Sandwich”) is way too high to stop the army of tinkering, many don’t even have a warranty to void.

Barnes & Noble has estimated that out of millions of their first “tablet” e-readers only 3% were “rooted” or tinkered with. This dismissive figure is quite misleading, as the buying decision of people who might never run an alternative firmware for it (such as CyanogenMod 7) could be very much swayed in favor of a NOOK Color just by the notion that this e-reader can have a “full” Android/Google experience on top of very limited functions offered by Barnes & Noble.

Let’s have a look what’s going on in the “alternative” uses of these tablets.

1. Amazon Kindle Fire

Custom CyanogenMod 7 ROM is being built, and we have posted a video tutorial of its installation on Fire here. The process is quite convoluted, except for a single button there are no other hardware buttons available on Fire to operate the ClockWorkMod recovery routine. Sound, audio, sound tracks don’t work just yet on this early beta, but the work on this ROM continues. Less “invasive” customization may take form of “rooting” the device and sideloading all the available for Gingerbread Google Experience: Google’s Market, and Google Apps. Rooting cuts Amazon Instant video access though. But all it takes is a simple routine to “unroot” the device after all additions have been made.

We informed you that the first experimental release of Ice Cream Sandwich (Android 4.0.1) runs on the device already. Here again, sound is missing which might obviously be explained by similar reasoning of a faulty driver as in CM7 case. The work is going on, and Fire becomes a truly powerful tablet that Amazon could never dream of.

2. Barnes & Noble’s NOOK Tablet

Bootloader of the device is apparently locked. The reasoning behind employing such a strong security measure is quite unclear, because an obvious argument that Netflix might require it for certification of its app for the NOOK Tablet doesn’t hold water. Namely, NOOK Tablet can be quite easily rooted, and superuser access can be granted to whatever part of the system except for bootloader and kernel. Netflix app is nowhere near that secure zone somebody tried to envision. The decision to put NOOK Tablet’s bootloader under a lock hinders the development of alternative firmwares for the tablet, just like the similar locked bootloaders did to certain Android phones.

There are ongoing efforts to solve this problem by utilizing several techniques that might help to circumvent this obstacle. Otherwise, and outside the bootloader issue, many customizations of the present stock firmware are becoming available.

3. HP Touchpad

This tablet is a quite a different beast: the two e-readers above are essentially based on the same TI OMAP4430 platform, this slate however is powered by Qualcomm’s dual core Snapdragon application processor. Some early Android development code for it helped to build a CyanogenMod 7 port of firmware for it. NOOK Color CM7 tree was used as the base for such porting. It’s mostly a proof of a concept, an Alpha 3 version, at which the development has stopped; the CM team of bright coders has Ice Cream Sandwich in their cross-hairs now.

Original, “stock” webOS is not dead either on the device, we reported the story of its release as the open source project recently. The community of webOS developers might not be as big as the Android community by head count, but it certainly has a good force. Ryan Paul of Arstechnica even muses that webOS could end up more open than Android is, he also thinks about “the possibility of porting the webOS platform’s sophisticated HTML application runtime environment to other operating systems. This could allow webOS applications to eventually run seamlessly on Android devices or even desktop platforms.”. This is kind of a unexpected turn. Yet these guys had most of the CSS3 rendering hardware accelerated (like nobody else outside the QNX and iOS camps. So sure, borrow from webOS if you can. Pity Android must abandon its framework on this move to webOSdroid, but who cares? Me, I don’t.

Steps to build Ice Cream Sandwich on the HP Touchpad are under consideration. But as everywhere in this race to ICS, getting a working Linux 3.0.1+ kernel is the key. So far, Android in the form of CM7 on HP Touchpad has failed to show sufficiently more interesting features than NOOK Color has with its CM7. Which is to say, further development of webOS on HP Touchpad can bring much more perfection to the usability of this tablet.

4. RIM Blackberry Playbook

Until lately, this iron-clad QNX-based system failed to attract much attention from the community of hackers. Yet a couple of weeks ago an irreverently named group of three hackers had obviously succeded in rooting its system to the point where they were able to put Google’s Android Market and Google Apps on this little beast:

The importance of this step is hard to overestimate. While the device is still running intact core of Blackberry OS, its “native” sandboxed Android player has left many things to be desired. Other pranks in the form of ICS or even webOS builds for BB Playbook may appear, and the value of a Playbook as a powerful, professional mobile computing tablet will only increase while its price drops lower and lower.

Appeal of IGoogle’s Ice Cream Sandwich is growing strong for “legacy” devices, too; developers of CyanogenMod 7 for NOOK Color are now busy putting Ice Cream Sandwich on the device. Then, there is ithis strange and very cheap Chinese Ainovo tablet that suddenly got Google’s blessing and certication as the first tablet running Ice Cream Sandwich. Obviously, this tablet will be late to be had as a Christmas gift, but the developments of ICS firmware for many other tablets (and smartphones, too) show a very significant trend.

Tablets in 2012 will certainly become more fun to own and use and of course, more open.

The post 2011 Hacker Tablet Guide: TouchPads, Fire’s and Playbooks Rooted appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

The market has recently become rather crowded with all the latest tablet devices from around the world. Recent devices like the Kindle Fire and Nook Tablet have really pushed the Android platform further and made it more popular than ever.

Barnes & Noble has released their Q2 earnings report and it appears like their recently launched Nook tablet has had an amazing start.

The company’s Nook business, which includes both the actual devices and content available for them, is now a $220 million business, an increase of 85 percent.

The Nook tablet, which was launched on November 7 with a price tag of $249, has become their fastest selling device to date according to reports.Barnes and Noble has yet to give out any official reports as to the exact number of tablets sold, though.

The fairly low-cost price tag has certainly contributed to the success of the Nook. The company’s strategy to lower the price of their Nook Color and Nook Simple Touch e-readers to $199 and $99, respectively, has also helped.

Sales on the company’s B&N.com website increased by 17 percent (from $177 million to $206 million) from the same quarter last year.

Although the Nook is doing well on the market, the company faced a net loss of $6.6 million (a slight improvement over the $12.6 million net loss in the previous year) in Q2 and the total sales decreased from $1.90 billion to $1.89 billion.

Despite its struggles with its non-Nook businesses, the company has high hopes for Q3. According to William Lynch, CEO of Barnes & Noble, “We expect to sell millions of devices during our third quarter, adding to the millions of current NOOK customers”.

Although the Nook tablet is an impressive piece of hardware, it is still too early to see whether or not it will be a major saving grace for the company or not. Additionally, Amazon’s $199 Kindle Fire means some pretty stiff competition for Nook as well.

The post Barnes & Noble Nook Is Now A $220 Million Business appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

Last month, the ad-supported Amazon Kindle was revealed at a paltry $114. Even if you do away with the ads, an entry-level Kindle is still only $139. Well, now you can land yourself a Nook from Barnes and Noble for the same $139, except this one gets a touchscreen.

No, it’s not really the same as the more expensive (and Android-powered) Nook Color, but the lower-cost Nook e-reader still gives you a touchscreen interface on its 6-inch display. It’s also 35% lighter than its predecessor. If you want to go cheaper, the original Nook is now $119, though B&N has stopped making them.

The Nook is second only to the Kindle when it comes to the dedicated e-book reader market and this cheaper touchscreen option should help with that growth. Not everyone wants to spend $499+ on an iPad, you know. In any case, the new touchscreen Nook is available now through the B&N site and will show up in retail stores (including Best Buy) next month.

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