Barnes & Noble E-Reader Takes Page From iPhone, Kindle

Ed Sutherland ()

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New photos and descriptions of a Barnes & Noble e-reader leaked Wednesday, whetting consumers’ appetite ahead of next week’s press conference promising a “historic” announcement. The e-reader supposedly combines features found in Amazon’s Kindle, as well as a touch-screen interface similar to Apple’s iPhone.

Gizmodo provided the details, describing the unnamed e-reader as combining a Kindle-like e-ink 6-inch main display but opting for a LCD touch-screen panel rather than physical buttons. The 480×144-pixel panel with 155dpi resolution will be used to flip through books similar to Apple’s “coverflow” technology allowing people to quickly review their music collection.

The combination of Kindle and iPhone technologies is viewed as a way of overcoming each products’ shortcomings. While e-ink technology saves battery lifespan, it fails when it comes to menus. In fact, the Kindle has had to resort to a physical keyboard for searches. LCD displays, such as those used by Sony’s e-reader, consume valuable screen real estate and is notoriously hard on eyes for activities such as reading books. Barnes & Nobles’ e-reader reportedly will use the LCD panel sparingly- appearing only for user input, then vanishing to devote more screen space for reading.

Although the bookseller’s device is expected to be just 50% of the Kindle, the e-reader will attempt to make up for the lower price through book sales, a revenue stream also used by Amazon. However, the B&N reader will let owners share excerpts or entire books via Facebook and Twitter, according to the report.

If true, the Barnes & Noble e-reader, rumored to be created by Plastic Logic, will beat Apple to the punch. The Cupertino, Calif. company will unveil its own tablet devices possibly with a number of publishers onboard in the first quarter of 2010, according to AppleInsider.

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[Via Gizmodo and AppleInsider]

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About the author

Ed Sutherland

Ed Sutherland is a veteran technology journalist who first heard of Apple when they grew on trees, Yahoo was run out of a Stanford dorm and Google was an unknown upstart. Since then, Sutherland has covered the whole technology landscape, concentrating on tracking the trends and figuring out the finances of large (and small) technology companies.

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  • http://merchantcashadvanced.com Chris R

    This is why I’ve waited this long to purchase an e-reader. I knew there had to be something better than what was already out there. I’m wondering if I should wait a little longer though.

  • Allan

    These devices will be doomed when Apple releases its tablet.

  • http://copiesandink.com Bill Alpert

    I still remember my foolhardy investment in an Apple Newton. The current crop of reader devices strike me as being at a similar level of development. And the cost of content is still surprisingly high.

    All of this makes this category: Not quite ready for large scale acceptance!

  • http://www.commandn.tv Jeff MacArthur

    Uh, Sony’s eReader is NOT an LCD screen! What kind of eReader doesn’t use eInk these days?

    Please, it just takes a second to do a little research…

    http://www.sony.co.uk/hub/reader-ebook/block/7/subblock/1#rb5

    Jeff