Barnes and Noble has a new six inch e-reader coming out this week and they also have a new tablet they will be releasing on the same day. The Nations largest bookseller is continuing their relationship with Samsung and the hardware will be based on the Samsung Galaxy Tab S2 8.0.
The Samsung Galaxy Tab S2 is poised to go on sale this Friday, which is the same date as the new Nook Tablet and Nook e-Reader are poised to be announced. The tablet features an 8 inch Super AMOLED capacitive touchscreen display with a resolution of 1536 x 2048 pixels with 320 PPI.
Underneath the hood is a Octacore processor featuring a Quad-core 1.9 GHz & quad-core 1.3 GHz. There will be 3G of RAM and an SD card that supports up to 128 GB of extra memory. It is unclear whether Barnes and Noble will support two different variants of memory, since Samsung has both 32/64 GB for internal storage. You will be able to take pictures via the rear facing 8 MP camera or employ the front-facing 2 MP camera for video conferencing.
If you purchase this tablet it will have a fairly modern version of Android, in the form of v5.0.2 (Lollipop). It will be bundled with the Google Play app store, Nook App Store and Samsung App Store. So there will be no shortage of ways you can download anything you need. B&N will also be loading in all of the apps that debuted on the Samsung Galaxy Tab for Nook, such as their e-book store, library, magazine system and customized settings menus.
Barnes and Noble has telegraphed the new Samsung 8.0 tablet via their website where they have a few new two-way cases. The big question is, will you buy this tablet? It has way better resolution, processor power and RAM than any other Nook tablet to date.
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.