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Barnes & Noble is aiming to provide a cheaper tablet, today announcing an 8GB version of its Nook Tablet that has cut the price down to $199.

The Nook Tablet that debuted in 2011 had twice as much internal storage (16GB) and many of the same features present in the just-announced Nook Tablet – 8GB. But that higher storage led to a higher price of $249, which made it difficult for Barnes & Noble to compete with Amazon’s Kindle Fire. Sure, the higher storage, solid 1 GHz dual-core processor, and solid battery life are great, but the perceived advantages didn’t justify a $50 higher price tag in some eyes. Now B&N can argue that it’s 7-inch tablet is not only better, but costs the same, which consumers might see as a better value.

Of course, the runaway success of the Kindle Fire was never about specs (performance on the device was rated rather poorly by most reviewers). The reason Amazon managed to become the leading Android tablet with millions of sales in late 2011 was because of its retail prowess and the wealth of digital content – books, music, and movies – available on the device. Barnes & Noble also has its own book store and device-specific apps, so maybe the lower price will close the gap.

The Nook Tablet – 8GB is on sale today for $199. The price of the original Nook Color has also been dropped to $169. Visit a local Barnes & Noble to purchase today. Best Buy, Target, and Wal-Mart will also carry the devices soon.

Nook Tablet 8 GB specs

• A highly tuned 1GHz dual-core processor for streaming video and lightning-fast Web browsing so customers can surf their favorite sites, and built-in email to stay easily connected with friends and family
• Breakthrough battery life, with 11.5 hours of reading time or nine hours of video viewing
• With on-board storage plus convenient microSD memory expansion, customers have ample space for their reading and entertainment content, regardless of Wi-Fi availability
• The world’s most advanced VividView display for viewing content, with 16 million colors and a resolution purity that’s simply gorgeous
• Popular movies, TV shows and music from top services including Netflix, Hulu Plus™, Flixster, Pandora®, Rhapsody®, Grooveshark, MOG and many more.

 

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An avalanche of new Android-based gadgets is expected to hit us next week at the MWC in Barcelona, which means that until then we are bound to analyze leaks, rumors and speculations of all sorts.

The ViewSonic ViewPad G70 is the latest gadget to pop up on the Internet and might be a device to watch in Spain, even though it’s not set to come with the best performance level possible. The 7-inch tablet has been spotted at CostCentral.com and, despite the fact that we have pretty much no idea how it will look, we are fairly intrigued.

The 7-incher will most definitely run Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich out of the box and other known features include 1 GB of RAM, only 4 GB of internal storage space, dual cameras, as well as WiFi, Bluetooth and optional 3G.

No details are for the time being known about the tablet’s processor or about the cameras, but rumors point towards a dual-core chipset, a 2 MP rear-facing shooter and a 0.3 MP front-facing webcam. However, these are only speculations, so as usual, they should be taken with a pinch of salt.

The ViewSonic ViewPad G70 will also come with a mini HDMI connector, a micro USB port and a microSD card slot, which is pretty nice, while as far as pricing is concerned, CostCentral.com is listing the 7-incher with a 311.99 dollars tag.

It’s difficult to say whether the quality-price ratio will be fair or not, as we don’t know what processor will the tablet feature and we have yet to find out a few important details about the screen, but all these should be clarified as soon as next week. Stay tuned on Androinica.com to find out more about the upcoming ViewSonic ViewPad G70!

 

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It seems Barnes and Noble’s Nook Tablet isn’t too keen on being shown up by Amazon’s Kindle Fire in the sales department. The more-powerful Nook Tablet is certainly the better spec’d tablet on paper, and with only a $50 higher price tag, it probably should be selling more than it is. Nevertheless, the major bookseller has watched it’s Nook Tablet’s modest sales pale in comparison to Amazon’s, which became America’s #2 tablet in just 6 short weeks.

The original Nook Tablet has 16 GB of storage to the Kindle Fire’s 8 GB, and storage is widely thought to be the biggest reason for the price difference between the two tablets. No longer content to sit back and watch the Kindle Fire bask in success, Barnes and Noble will launch an 8 GB version of the Nook Tablet, likely with the same $199 price tag of its main competitor.

The Verge got its hands on an internal document that shows not only that the 8GB tablet does in fact exist, it’s coming a lot sooner than you think. Wal-Mart and Barnes and Noble will begin selling the device starting this Wednesday, February 22nd. No official announcement has come from Barnes and Noble to date, though we suspect that’ll drop relatively soon and confirm the $199 price point.

Anyone out there planning on picking up a $199 8 GB variant of the Nook Tablet, or are you already reading this article on your Kindle Fire, thank you very much?

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Just days after telling you about a pretty interesting deal involving a refurbished HTC Flyer with 16 GB of internal storage space, we have an even greater and more tempting offer. The HTC Evo View, which is basically the Flyer with 4G connectivity, is available for a limited time only for $249.99.

That’s 50 bucks more than the Flyer on sale last week, but this discounted slate today is not refurbished and, aside from coming with a one-year manufacturer warranty, it also features 32 GB of on-board memory.

What’s the catch, then? Well, I must honestly say I have no idea. I mean, the same identical tablet is available these days on Amazon for around 350 dollars, so I can’t imagine how the guys at Newegg managed to squeeze such a discount.

On the other hand, it must be said that the tablet is not actually sold by Newegg, but 1SaleADay, a reseller about which I don’t have much information. That might well be the catch and you may encounter some problems with the tablet’s shipping or whatnot, but as far as I’m concerned this is still a pretty nice deal and it might well be worth the ‘’risk’’.

For those of you who have forgotten what the Evo View (or Flyer) is all about, let’s quickly recap its most important features and tech specs. The slate sports a 7-inch TFT LCD capacitive touchscreen with 1024 x 600 pixels resolution and is powered by a 1.5 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon MSM8655 processor.

As I already mentioned, the device on sale at Neweeg comes with 32 GB of internal storage space, while other features include 1 GB of DDR2 RAM, WiFi, Bluetooth 3.0, 3G and 4G connectivity, a 5 MP rear-facing camera, a 1.3 MP front-facing webcam and a pretty strong battery capable of running for around six or seven hours between charges.

The 7-incher only runs Android 2.3 Gingerbread right now, but according to some reports a while back, it should be updated to 3.2 Honeycomb soon enough. There’s also the HTC Sense user interface on top of it all and, at least as far as I’m concerned, this gadget is a definite steal for just 250 bucks right now.

There’s no word on when the offer will expire, but if I were to guess, it shouldn’t run for more than a couple of days tops, so if you are thinking of taking advantage of this deal, you should do it sooner rather than later.

 

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The HTC Flyer may be last year’s model, running on a single-core 1.5GHz processor with a 7-inch display, but we’re sure a few of you might be a little intrigued by the Android tablet if we said you could pick one up today for less than $200. Buy.com is selling the refurbished HTC Flyer for $199.99, but you can get an additional $10 off with one of the many coupon codes for the site, bringing your total cost down to $189.99. To give you an idea of how good this deal is, you could buy the refurbished HTC Flyer for $189 and then turn around and sell it on eBay and make a $30-40 profit.

Yes, we’re talking about a refurbished tablet here, but lets not forget that the HTC Flyer was one of the most unique tablets to be unveiled last year, featuring HTC’s Scribe technology with digital pen integration. You could spend ten dollars more and get yourself the Amazon Kindle Fire (which does not have access to the Android Market) or there’s always the 7-inch Acer Iconia Tab A100 (which got a handful of negative reviews) for a little more than $300.

Keep in mind, the refurbished HTC Flyer does come with a 90-day manufacturer warranty. And just because it’s refurbished doesn’t mean there was anything wrong with the tablet; most refurbished products are simply items that were returned to stores by consumers after they realized they didn’t want or need the product. From what we can tell, the refurbished HTC Flyer is running on Android 2.3.3, but users can download the Android 3.2 update once the device is activated.

If you own the HTC Flyer, leave us a comment below and let everyone know what you like about the tablet. Is a refurbished HTC Flyer worth $189?

According to Digitimes, Google may release the next major version of Android, Android 5.0 Jelly Bean, as early as Q2 2012. Digitimes cites Taiwan-based supply chain makers who suggest that Android 5.0 will feature optimizations for tablets and tablet-like devices. The timing would put Android 5.0′s release in line with Microsoft’s Windows 8 platform, and Digitimes claims that Google will be appealing to tablet manufacturers to provide customers with dual-boot capabilities that will allow booting into either Windows 8 or Android 5.

With Google promising last year that the Android update cycle would slow down so that one major platform version would be released per year, we’re a bit skeptical that we’ll see a major version of Android launch just 8-9 months after Ice Cream Sandwich was unveiled. It is possible that we’ll see some hints of what’s to come in Android 5.0 at Google’s I/O Conference, which is aptly set to take place in June this year.

The report claims that Android 4.0 was a “failure,” though to date only one phone and a handful of tablets have officially gotten an update to Ice Cream Sandwich. Manufacturers are hard at work building their custom UI skins atop of Android 4.0 so they can release the update to their devices in Q2 and Q3. By the end of 2012, we’ll see a majority of devices in the wild just starting to run Android 4.0, and if Google actually releases Android 5.0 in Q2, we likely won’t see it adopted until well into the holiday season or even Q1 2013.

If we were a betting website (and, we totally are), we’d bet that some aspects Android 4.1 (or 5.0) with tablet optimizations will be unveiled at Google IO in June, and will start to hit devices in September/October. It will be a minor update on the phone side of things, allowing manufacturers to quickly update their devices to the latest version, and will be a major refresh for tablets as Google bolsters its tablet devices to compete with iOS and Windows 8.

What do you guys think? Will Google launch the next version of Android by June, or do you think it’ll be the second half of the year?

I’ve always been jealous of people with dual-monitor displays, especially since I do most of my work on laptop these days. My tablet has filled in some of the gaps by providing me with a secondary screen for controlling some media options and Twitter monitoring, but that limits me to only accessing content with an Android app. If only there I knew how to turn an Android tablet into a second monitor for a PC or Mac.

Oh, there’s already an app for that? Of course there is.

Air Display is a new app that increases your visual workspace by becoming a wireless display for your computer. Once the tablet and PC/Mac are connected to the same computer, Air Display can be requisitioned to display content from your computer. Whether in landscape or portrait, the tablet will display content and give you a larger workspace. So if you need a dedicated window for Twitter, viewing documents, browsing photos, or having a secondary screen during coding sessions, Air Display fits the bill. (You can also use Mirror Display to show an exact image of the desktop on the tablet that updates instantly.)

And it’s not just about displaying content; Air Display actually lets users interact as well. The app can act as a control surface for music production and recording apps like Logic or ProTools. It can also house the palettes for Photoshop, giving graphic designers more room on-screen. There limited input controls and gesture support that can turn the tablet into a mouse of sorts.

Air Display costs $9.99 and requires and Android 2.3.7 or higher device when purchased in the Android Market. It’s also available in the Amazon Appstore. Be sure to check for desktop compatibility requirements. At the time of publishing this article, it requires Mac OS X 10.6 or later. Windows Vista and Windows 7 are supported, as is Windows XP (32-bit only). Windows 7 Starter Edition is not supported.

 

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The tablet wars are heating up! Apple is getting set to announce the iPad 3 next month. BlackBerry is going to release a major PlayBook OS update any day. The Kindle Fire is hot as is the Transformer Prime in a sea of Android tablets. And Windows 8 tablets are getting ready to enter the battle.

With so much going on we wanted to take a moment and find out where you weigh in on the tablet wars. We have five quick questions (and one bonus) that will take you less than a minute. Hit the link below.

Take the Survey!

A German court in Munich today announced that it has sided with Apple in the company's latest patent dispute with Motorola Mobility, which involves slide-to-unlock gestures. Of the three unlock gestures that Motorola uses, two were found to infringe Apple's patent; a third, the slide-the-circle gesture used on Motorola's XOOM tablet, was exempt from the ruling. 

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WSL Japan is a very well-known electronics manufacturer in Asia, but unfortunately in the United States there is probably no one who has ever heard of their products. Their latest tablet effort has little to no chance of becoming a hit in America, but it still looks nice and snappy enough to be at least mentioned on our blog.

The Xvision an4 has just been officially announced and, as far as we can tell from the Japanese press release, it is set to hit the market in April for a yet to be specified price. Sporting a 9.7-inch capacitive multi-touch display with 1024 x 768 pixels resolution and 4:3 aspect ratio, the slate is clearly intended to be an iPad copycat, if not an iPad killer.

With a pretty elegant and stylish overall look, the Xvision an4 is set to be pretty slim, measuring a mere 10 mm (0.39) inches thick. If I were to speculate based on the couple of official photos released, the slate should also be fairly light, but the exact weight hasn’t been made public just yet.

Under the hood the tablet is not exactly groundbreaking or impressive, but it comes with a decent 1 GHz Amlogic 8726-M3 processor, which is basically an A9 ARM Cortex with Mali 400 GPU, and 1 GB of DDR3 RAM.

Other features include WiFi and Bluetooth connectivity, optional 3G and GPS, an 0.3 megapixel front-facing camera and 16 GB of internal storage space. As I already said, it’s not impressive or innovative, but it’s more than decent for a medium-end tablet these days.

The 9.7-inch slate is also set to run Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich out of the box, which would be pretty great, but on the other hand I personally think that there’ll be loads of ICS tablets on the market by April, so it’s not that big of a deal after all.

That’s pretty much all I could decipher from the WSL Japan’s press release, but stay tuned for more details set to unravel during the coming weeks.

 

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