After about a year and a half of life, the Nexus 9 was just put down quietly by Google. While the tablet's premium aspirations and matching price tag may have caused it to stumble out of the gates, the very capable tablet is still available at third-party vendors and HTC.

While Google hasn't said anything about the Nexus 9's retirement, the company has removed the tablet's listing from the Google Store. Google, with past Nexus devices, has left marketing materials for discontinued products online for awhile, along with an epitaph noting that this item is "no longer available for purchase."

The Nexus 9 is still listed on Google's site, but that listing now leads to the Google Store's homepage. That link to the Google Play store on the main site is flanked by a link to Amazon where the Nexus 9 is available for 20 percent off the list price.

HTC, which was commissioned by Google to build the Nexus 9, hasn't given up on the tablet just yet and is still selling it. But HTC isn't offering any discounts on the tablet right now.

While its price and certain parts put it comfortably in the premium tier, there were several issues that plagued the Nexus 9 and made it a hard sell to those considering rivals like the iPad Air 2 or even the older Nexus 10.

Ultimately, it seems Google and HTC's 9-inch baby just never had the wow factor needed to build a big following. Despite that, the Nexus 9 still had a lot of power under its hood and a stunning display.

The 8.9-inch display, protected by Gorilla Glass 3, puts out a pixel count of 2048 x 1536 and its graphics are rendered by a 192-core Kepler GPU from Nvidia.

The device is powered by a 64-bit Nvidia Tegra K1 Dual Denver processor that is clocked at 2.3 GHz. It's stocked with 2 GB of RAM in both of its storage configurations, which are 16 GB and 32 GB.

For more on the Nexus 9, check out Tech Times' review of the tablet: