It seems Barnes & Noble is making another push for its Nooks with a special version of the Samsung Galaxy Tab 4.
Rather than bringing out a device of its own, the bookstore chain and is-it-or-isn't-it e-reader maker announced it teamed up with Samsung to produce a 7-inch tablet featuring the same hardware as the original plus a customized Nook interface.
Adding on yet another layer of customization on top of Android 4.4 KitKat, the Nook interface has been designed for reading and accessing the company's digital collection.
Barnes & Noble boasts it has a digital store of more than three million books, magazines and newspapers.
What's inside?
Underneath the extra software, the Galaxy Tab 4 Nook is essentially the same as the vanilla version of Samsung's slate.
The 7-inch Tab 4 has 1280 x 800 resolution display powered by quad-core 1200 MHz processor. On the memory front, it has 1.5GB of RAM.
Neither Samsung nor B&N have announced how much storage will come aboard but users will be able to expand the tablet with an additional 64GB by slotting in a microSD card.
If the Galaxy Tab 4 Nook comes with 16GB it should run for about $200, the same price as original the Samsung device. Interested buyers can expect the tablet to drop in the US by early August.
Nook's Last stand
Things have not been looking up for Barnes & Nobile's Nook brand since digital sales began flattening as far back as August 2012. Despite the precipitous dive in revenue, B&N soldiered on promising to develop new tablets last August.
Months later it seems the Samsung Galaxy Tab 4 Nook is Barnes & Noble's best shot at recapturing the e-reader market that's been stripped away by affordable tablets like the Nexus 7 and Kindle Fire HDX 7.
- Why not just run the Nook app on a iPad Air?
