With dual screens and Android hiding within, the Barnes & Noble Nook sets its aim on Amazon's Kindle.
Barnes and Noble today unveiled their highly anticipated e-book, the new Barnes and Noble Nook. The B&N Nook looks just like we suspected, with a 6-inch, e-ink screen up top and a 3.5-inch, color LCD touchscreen below. The top screen is a high-contrast, monochrome grey-scale display, perfect for reading, while the bottom screen offers full color for browsing book covers and other on-device menus. Inside, the B&N Nook E-Reader packs both 3G networking on AT&T's wireless data network and Wi-Fi for browsing on your home network, or taking advantage of the Wi-Fi in Barnes & Noble brick and mortar stores. In fact, Barnes & Noble will take advantage of their own Wi-Fi access by offering Nook users the opportunity to browse 1 e-book in its entirety every time they visit a B&N store.
The Barnes & Noble Nook packs 2GB of internal memory, which Barnes & Noble says is enough capacity for 1,500 e-books, and the device can also use microSD cards for additional storage. Books will be available from B&N in the ePub formats, but the Nook will also support .PDF files for reading. The Barnes & Noble Nook runs Android, but the company isn't being clear about how much access buyers will have to the full mobile OS. B&N reps have dodged questions about 3rd party apps, and Web browsing seems to be out of the picture so far.
That doesn't mean that the Barnes & Noble Nook doesn't have some unique features. While Amazon's Kindle device and service traps books on their own branded e-reader, the Barnes & Noble Nook seems to promote sharing books. You can lend one of your e-books to anyone with a B&N branded reader. That includes software readers on devices like the Apple iPhone and BlackBerry phones. Lent books will be available to your borrowers for up to 2 weeks. In addition, you can synchronize your library across multiple devices. So, if you are taking notes on a copy of Moby Dick on your Nook, you'll have your notes available on your BlackBerry and your desktop Barnes & Noble readers.
The Barnes & Noble Nook gets a headphone jack, but B&N hasn't been clear about what you'll be listening to on their e-book device. We assume that audiobooks will play on some sort of media software, and if the device is running Android then it could feasibly play back audio and video content, perhaps on the smaller, lower screen. In Barnes & Noble's own comparisons with the Amazon Kindle, they fail to mention the Kindle's text-to-speech capabilities, which have caused problems in the publishing community, but make a compelling feature for Amazon's device.
The Nook is thicker than the Amazon Kindle by about 4mm, but smaller in every other way. Unlike Amazon's device, the B&N Nook uses a replaceable battery, and Barnes & Noble says a single battery charge will last up to 10 days of reading with the wireless capabilities turned off. The Barnes & Noble Nook will be available before the end of the holiday season for $259. Individual book titles will average around $10, though there is plenty of free content available that will work with the B&N Nook.
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