New Nook: The Simple Touch Reader

Finally, touch comes to e-book readers

I love e-book readers, and carry my third generation Kindle everywhere I go. But I wish it came with a touch screen. After all, even my phone has touch so why not the e-reader? But while Amazon may have been thinking about a touch-enabled Kindle, Barnes & Noble has pulled off a coup.

While a full colour version is available for $249, what is shown above is the 6 inch Simple Touch Reader. It has a black and white display.

While this reader is thinner than a pencil, it is still thicker than the Kindle third generation. However, it is lighter than the Kindle, and its soft curved back makes it nicer to hold. It has 2 GB of internal memory (good for about 1,000 books), which can be expanded to 32 GB with an SD card.

The Nook features a new e-ink Pearl screen, which allows a sharper and brighter display, and also a much faster refresh rate. B&N also claims a battery life of two months for this new Nook, but only if you keep the Wi-Fi switched off. For good or for bad, only Wi-Fi enabled models are available—no 3G models here.

The e-reader is powered by an 800 megahertz processor, and runs on Android 2. This means the Nook can access a large library of Android apps. But, apps apart, B&N’s library of books is no match for Amazon’s.

The software is all new and the new home page layout is nice too. You can now see what books you are reading and what page you read last—straight off the home page.

A nice add-on feature is that you can check the meaning of any word by simply tapping on the word twice. With its Facebook app you can share any paragraph. If you want to save a section for later reference, you can do that too. And features such as Lend Me are still part of this Nook.

e-booke-readertouch screen