Barnes & Noble(NYSE:BKS) has taken a page out of Amazon’s(NASDAQ:AMZN) book again recently by rebranding their eReader applications under the nook. This comes at the same time as, and is therefore well illustrated by, the much anticipated release of the nook software for the Android operating system, which is now available in the Apps store as a free download.
By all accounts, this is a solid piece of software. It seems to have most every feature we’ve come to expect in eReader applications for cellular devices, and an intuitive functionality very similar to that of the popular Kindle for Android application. I like having multiple font options a lot, and I can see the use for having additional font sizes even if I’m perfectly happy personally with the usual ones available on either app.
The one place that the nook app falls short, and it is kinda a big deal, is the complete lack of brightness and background controls. While it is obviously likely to be difficult to get something like that to work across a broad range of hardware profiles and other such difficulties, it is almost essential to have these features when reading on most cell phone types of screens. It’s a neat piece of software and I honestly believe that it is superficially better than anything else I’ve seen so far, short of buying a Kindle or nook or something, but when it comes to regular use you’ll be hurting for more control over the screen rather quickly.
now we just need nook for kindle and kindle for nook software (or at least apps to let you download books from the other stores)
then let the real fun begin as the stores really compete
I was going to download this, but it takes up 15-17MB of space and can’t be loaded to the SD card. That’s way too much space. The Kindle app was only 5MB. I know several people that tried to load the app and couldn’t because of not enough space on the phone.