Barnes & Noble unveiled its wireless ebook reader today. The device, called nook, will come with, as expected, both an e-ink display and a colour touchscreen for navigation.
nook features many industry firsts as it is the first Android-based eBook reader and the first to offer a color touch screen for navigation along with a best-in-class E Ink display for an immersive, enjoyable e-reading experience. For fast connectivity, nook is the first eBook reader to provide, at no additional costs to customers, both 3G wireless access on AT&T’s mobile broadband network and access to Wi-Fi for Barnes & Noble in-store browsing and enjoyment. And to help friends share their joy of reading, nook is the first eBook reader to offer digital lending for a wide selection of eBooks.
The nook is powered by Google Android 1.5. It comes with a 6-inch 16-level gray scale display as well as a 3.5-inch colour capacitive touchscreen, 3G connectivity over the AT&T network, 802.11 b/g Wi-Fi (with free Wi-Fi in all Barnes & Noble stores), 2GB of internal memory (enough for about 1,500 ebooks), a microSD card slot, a built-in MP3 player, a 3.5 mm stereo headphone jack and mono speaker, . The nook supports the EPUB, PDB and PDF formats.
The nook will also let you lend ebooks to friends for up to 14 days. The book can be shared with another nook or with an Apple iPhone, iPod touch, select BlackBerry and Motorola smartphones, and even PCs (with the Barnes & Noble eReader software).
Barnes & Noble will offer over 1 million ebooks as well as subscriptions to more than 20 newspapers and magazines.
Barnes & Noble will offer the nook for US$259 (the same price as the Amazon Kindle). It will begin to ship the nook in late November but has begun to take pre-orders.