Hasta La Gadget!

Barnes & Noble has announced its attack on the UK market, and it’s the NOOK Simple Touch and Simple Touch GlowLight that will lead the charge. The two E Ink ereaders – which have been on sale in the US for some months now – will arrive on UK shores in time for the holidays, priced at £79 for the basic model and £109 for its illuminating sibling.

Both models use a 6-inch epaper display with a zero-pressure touchscreen, and rely on WiFi for connectivity to the NOOK Store. Inside there’s 1GB of storage – good for up to 1,000 books – with a microSD card slot tucked under a cover for adding to that.

The GlowLight version, meanwhile, has an optional illumination system that can gently light up the screen for easier reading in bed. The level of lighting can be adjusted, and B&N says that users will still see a month of battery life (with WiFi turned off) even if the GlowLight is active continuously. Without the backlighting, and with WiFi deactivated, both models will run for up to two months.

The two ereaders are up for preorder in the UK now, and as well as each hitting shelves in time for Christmas, B&N says its free NOOK apps for iOS and Android will arrive in the UK in the autumn. UK stores John Lewis, Argos, Sainsbury’s, Dixons, Waitrose, Blackwell’s, and Foyles will be stocking each model.

There’s more on the NOOK Simple Touch with GlowLight in our full review.

B&N NOOK Simple Touch and Simple Touch GlowLight hit UK from £79 is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

It was roughly this time last year that Amazon’s Kindle Fire showed us just how successful an aggressively priced 7-inch tablet could be, becoming, arguably the go-to gift of the last holiday season. This summer, Google upped the ante, showing the world that a $200 tablet could be more than just an OEM-ed content delivery device, enlisting ASUS to design a really solid piece of hardware at a seemingly impossible price.

Barnes & Noble’s journey in the space, meanwhile, has been decidedly more convoluted. In mid-October of 2010, the company gave the world the Nook Color — a product with a wildly original industrial design, but decidedly limited functionality, which was, for most intents and purposes, an LCD-based color e-reader. Halfway through the following year, the device got a Pinocchio-like upgrade, transforming it into an honest-to-goodness tablet, apps and all. The device’s celebration was cut short, however, eclipsed entirely by the arrival of the aesthetically (nearly) identical, but internally superior Nook Tablet.

When Amazon announced the release of the Kindle Fire HD and all of its many variants, there was little question that Barnes & Noble had something waiting in the wings as well. After all, much of the bookseller’s hardware game plan seems to revolve around going toe-to-toe against Amazon offerings, and since the company beat its chief competition to the market with a glowing reader, a Nook Tablet seemed all but inevitable. With this week’s announcements, however, the company has managed to offer up some surprises — for starters, there’s the fact that it’s doubled its efforts with the release of two tablets — with the 7-inch Nook HD and the 9-inch Nook HD+. Then there’s the fact that the company has clearly put great effort into the hardware this go-round, rather than offering up yet another rehash of the Color / Tablet lineage. Let’s start with the Nook HD, shall we? Join us after the break.

Continue reading Barnes & Noble’s Nook HD 7-inch Android tablet, hands-on (video)

Filed under: Tablets

Barnes & Noble’s Nook HD 7-inch Android tablet, hands-on (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 26 Sep 2012 01:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The e-book market is an intense one to be in, and so is the tablet segment. Well, Barnes & Noble has just announced the launch of their very own Nook Video service that is happening later this fall, where Nook Video will allow users to purchase as well as watch their favorite movies and TV shows right there and then on their mobile devices and TVs. According to Barnes & Noble, Nook Video users can choose from an extensive collection of movies and shows, hailing from major studios such as HBO, Sony Pictures, Viacom and Warner Brothers. It would place Barnes & Noble in the direct firing line of online video providers, with Amazon.com and Apple being two of the bigwigs that most people would think of.

The Nook Video app will facilitate the downloading of videos as well as the ability to play back those videos. There is no word on pricing details as at press time, but if the price is right, do expect the uptake to be a rather impressive one, although we do think that it will in all probability, be competitive compared to their other rivals. You can forget about unlimited streaming services like Netflix from Barnes & Noble though.

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Nook Simple Touch runs a Sega Genesis emulator, Nook e-reader heads for the UK at long last,

We caught wind of an upcoming video offering from Barnes & Noble a couple of weeks back, as part of a tip on new tablet offerings from the company. And while we’ve yet to hear anything official on the latter, this morning the bookstore pulled back the curtain on Nook Video, a new service boasting support from heavy hitters like HBO, Sony, Warner Brothers, Viacom and Disney. The fruits of those partnerships include standard and high-def movies and TV shows like The Avengers, Brave, The Amazing Spider-man, Breaking Bad, The Daily Show and Game of Thrones, which can be watched on Nooks, and non-Barnes & Noble tablets and smartphones, courtesy of a forthcoming free app from the retailer, letting you pick up where you left off on different devices.

The offering can also be linked to UltraViolet purchases, making it possible to add titles purchased with that feature logo to the Nook Cloud offering. Nook Video will be arriving in the US this fall, followed by a “holiday” release in the UK.

Continue reading Barnes & Noble launching Nook Video this fall with a little help from HBO, Sony, Disney, Viacom, more

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Barnes & Noble launching Nook Video this fall with a little help from HBO, Sony, Disney, Viacom, more originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 25 Sep 2012 08:30:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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There we were, thinking touch-based versions of gaming classics were a bad idea on a device intended for gaming — and then we saw Sonic the Hedgehog 2 running on a Nook Simple Touch. YouTube user “ndncnbvcuyuys” rooted his touch-based Barnes & Noble e-reader, installed the Android 2.1 OS on it, and hooked up a Sega Genesis emulator. The results are not what we’d call “ideal,” but as the hacker says, “It is playable.” Sure, technically speaking, the on-screen virtual buttons allow interaction with Sonic and his buddy Tails, but whether it’s any fun at all is another question altogether. “ndncnbvcuyuys” seems to have a penchant for the impossibly fast games on touch-based e-readers, as he got PlayStation 1’s WipeOut running on the Nook Simple Touch just a few weeks back. Might we suggest a PlayStation Vita instead?

[Thanks, Ron]

Continue reading The Nook Simple Touch can run a Genesis emulator, but should it?

Filed under: Gaming, Mobile

The Nook Simple Touch can run a Genesis emulator, but should it? originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 19 Sep 2012 05:32:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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