How About A Little Nookie? Barnes And Noble Tablet 7 Blushes For The FCC
If you're in the market for a new tablet that also doubles as an e-reader, you may want to hold off for just a little bit. Rumors suggest Barnes & Noble will be releasing a new iteration of its NOOK Tablet in the very near future to battle in the low-end sector of the tablet market traditionally dominated by the Amazon Kindle Fire.
According to the leaked specs, it seems certain that this NOOK, called Tablet 7, will not be that expensive. It is likely being used to help Barnes & Noble better compete against the likes of Amazon, which itself offers a meager-spec'd Fire tablet for a mere $50.
Under the upcoming NOOK Tablet 7's hood is a MediaTek MT8163 CPU, a Mali-T720 GPU, a 3,000 mAh battery (which somehow could take up to 3 hours to fully charge), dual-band 802.11n Wi-Fi, a microSD card reader which supports cards up to 128GB in size, Bluetooth 4.0 LE, and despite its value proposition, front and rear cameras. As of the time of writing, the device's resolution, memory, and storage are all up in the air.
Based on the rumored specs we see, it's easy to tell that this is not going to be an expensive tablet, although it may still be more expensive than Amazon's $49 wonder - that's a seriously hard price-point to match. Hopefully it won't take too much longer before we find out what kind of true contender this NOOK will become, just in time for the holiday shopping season.