Barnes & Noble Joins With Samsung To Release New Nook Tablet

By Edward Cardenas

SOUTHFIELD (CBS Detroit) - A new generation of Nook tablets were released Wednesday by Samsung and Barnes & Noble.

The two companies collaborated to release the 7-inch Samsung Galaxy Tab 4 NOOK tablet, which is a full-featured Android tablet which is optimized for reading.

"The Samsung Galaxy Tab 4 NOOK is the most advanced NOOK ever, delivering the great NOOK experience our customers have come to love, with the high-performance tablet features they've asked for," said Michael P. Huseby, Chief Executive Officer of Barnes & Noble, Inc., in a release.

The tablet is available at more than 660 Barnes & Noble stores, and online, for$179 after a $20 instant rebate. The price includes more than $200 of free content from the NOOK Store including books, television shows and magazines.

"We've taken our bestselling Samsung Galaxy tablet and made it the best tablet available for reading and entertainment,"said Tim Baxter, President of Samsung Electronics America, in a release.

According to company officials, the new Nook is lighter and thinner than earlier Nook devices at 9.74 ounces and .35 inches.

In addition to providing users a digital method of reading books, the new Nook includes a built-in 1.3-megapixel front- and 3-megapixel rear-facing cameras for photos and video chats. The Wi-Fi enabled device also has a full suite of Google applications along with built-in GPS capabilities.

According to CNET, the tablet is available in black or white and has a  screen resolution of 1,280x768 pixels. It comes with 8GB of built-in storage, but the amount of storage can be expanded by using a micro-SD expansion slot.