The hardware is still great the reading experience is top notch and now you don’t have to wait for your favorite tablet apps to come to Nook’s store in order to use them. The addition of the Google Play Store raises the Nook HD+ to another level. Still, we predict that Barnes & Noble may have to roll out another update to smooth out a few performance kinks. The score of 3043 isn’t bad for a dual-core system. We noticed that the HD+ felt a bit sluggish, so we ran the Quadrant benchmark just to get a baseline for performance. Image used with permission by copyright holder The benefit is that updates will probably come faster to the Google Play versions. Google Play recognizes apps first installed via the Nook store and, if automatic updating is turned on, will replace them if you allow it. All the Nook services that were available before, including the App Store and Nook Video, are still available and accessible. Tapping the Browser icon from the Home screen takes you to Chrome, but the Mail icon still goes to the old mail app. In addition to the Google Play Store, HD and HD+ owners also got Play Books, Play Magazines, Play Movies & TV, Play Music, Gmail, YouTube, and Chrome in the update. All of the apps we downloaded worked just fine and gave us no issues. It stepped aside gracefully and SwiftKey works the same as ever. We also downloaded SwiftKey Tablet because the Nook’s keyboard, while decent, is not the best. B&N isn’t blocking Kindle or Kobo or any competitor’s e-reader app, and we took a perverse pleasure in installing Kindle right away. For instance, you can’t download any camera-based apps since there’s no camera. There are no restrictions on the apps you can download except those imposed by the hardware. Using the Nook now is pretty much the same as it was before the update. We’re impressed that the Nook developers integrated all the necessary functions so seamlessly into their existing user interface. The refreshed Fire HD 10 tablet is Amazon’s first product to use USB-C Fire HD Tablet 10: A pair of fire-fighters So even when the app developer doesn’t provide a way to go back, the operating system does.īarnes & Noble refreshes its Nook GlowLight e-book readerĪmazon Fire HD Tablet 8 vs. Just like stock ICS, when these buttons aren’t needed or you’re in a full screen app, they fade away to faint dots. Now the Back icon is persistent at the bottom of the screen most of the time. Pre-update, the Nooks had a recent apps and a search icon on the bottom of most apps and a back arrow in the apps that needed it. The underlying Android version on the Nook HDs is Ice Cream Sandwich, which is designed to work in a buttonless environment by putting Back, Home, and Recent Apps icons on the bottom of the screen. Again, they aren’t optimized for the size, so don’t look as nice as those from the Nook store. Owners can add apps from Google Play to their Home screens as normal and even enlarge the icon. The icons are not optimized to be this size, so they look low res and fuzzy. Like any other Nook content, new apps appear in the carousel at the top of the main Home screen. We went through a list of previously downloaded apps and started installing our favorites. The experience of using the Google Play store is the same as on any tablet. The existing apps can’t be updated via Google Play, though you can just uninstall and reinstall them if you want. This is how you can differentiate between apps that came from the Nook App Store from those that come from Google. Once we updated the Nook HD+ and the system rebooted, the only noticeable difference in the Home screen was the addition of the Google Play store icon and a small ‘n’ icon that appeared in the corner of our existing apps. We were eager to see if the tablet retained all the things we like about it while adding a feature sure to get customers to take note. We downloaded the update from for the HD+ and took the new software for a spin. The update not only adds Google Play but also tweaks the user interface so that apps work even though the Nooks run heavily modified software. Previously restricted to the Nook app store, now the Nooks have access to almost any app in the Android ecosystem. Share Image used with permission by copyright holderīarnes & Noble is now rolling out an over the air update to Nook HD and Nook HD+ tablets that brings the Google Play store to the platform.
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