The Nook sets itself apart from the pack with an innovative dual display, one part electrostatic ink book screen, and the other part a thoroughly modern 3.5-inch full-color touchscreen for navigating between menus and book covers.

Much like the Kindle before it, the nook can download books via Wi-Fi or 3G connections, and it offers a high-contrast 16-shade E Ink display for reading books. Free 3G coverage is provided by AT&T, while you’ll get free Wi-Fi whenever you’re visiting a B&N store. And it can read open standard files like PDF and e.pub documents -yay! Did I happen to mention the Nook runs on Google’s open source Android OS? Ruh-oh. Kindle’s on the ropes now.

Barnes & Noble will even let you sample a little bit of each book before you buy – sorta like the music previews on iTunes. The nook even lets you “lend out” books to your friends for up to 14 days at a time. They don’t even need to have a Nook – you can share them to a cell phone or computer too. You can even sync your books own to your iPhone, iPod Touch, BlackBerry, Mac or PC and pick up wherever you left off reading.

Barnes & Noble plans on offering over 1 million download-to-own eBooks, and a variety of subscription magazines and newspapers in its electronic bookstore, and the nook has enough storage on board to hold up to 1500 of ‘em. And if you’re a real bookworm, you can stick in a 16GB MicroSD card and carry around a your own mobile Library of Congress with up to 17,500 books.

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The nook will ship starting in late November, and will sell for $259.99 (USD). You can pre-order one now over at the Barnes & Noble website.

This knock-off – from a company called “Wefound” – is a dead ringer for the Kindle 2. From the slim white case to the 6-inch screen, to its nubby little keyboard, the Wefound E-Book reader is sure to raise the hackles of Amazon’s legal team. Other than the fact that the default character set is Chinese, and the square navigation joystick has been replaced with a round one, it looks nearly identical to the Kindle 2. (Although I’m sure under the hood, it’s not).

Just like the Kindle 2, the Wefound claims it will be able to download books over a cellular connection (you need to provide your own SIM card). They plan on releasing their E-Book reader by the end of the year in Japan for about $210 (USD). Me I’d rather plunk down an extra $90 bucks and get the real deal.

[via E-Ink Info]

Foxit took a long hard look at the Kindle’s specs and said, “Hmm. Pork.” No. They one-upped Amazon on so many levels that it’s amazing they ended up with a device that’s $100 cheaper than the Kindle. Like the Kindle, the eSlick also connects via USB, and it also plays MP3 files. But it can also open and create PDF files via the packaged Foxit software. Whereas the Kindle has 256 Mb of internal storage, the eSlick comes with a free 2 Gb SD card to boost its 128 Mb internal memory.  And at 0.4″, it’s 50% thinner than the Kindle.

One thing the eSlick concedes to the Kindle is the latter’s wireless connectivity via Whispernet, and of course Amazon’s online library. Here’s hoping that Amazon considers support for the eSlick, because everyone will benefit from that. Also because the eSlick is a $100 cheaper. Mostly because it’s a $100 cheaper.

Soon Foxit will be taking pre-orders at their website, with a special initial offer of $230, $30 off from the ordinary price.

[Foxit via electronista]

Chinavasion’s latest media player not only handles your music and videos with aplomb, it can also emulate a variety of classic gaming consoles. There’s emulation support for the NES, Gameboy, Gameboy Color and Sega Genesis so you can play your favorites from the past. In addition, the device also integrates an E-book capability that actually uses text-to-speech to read books to you in either Chinese or English.

The player has a 3-inch TFT widescreen, and comes with a snap-on gaming pad accessory so you can get your game on. The device has 2GB of on-board memory and can be expanded up to 6GB total, with the addition of a 4GB SD card. Chinavasion hasn’t announced a price yet, but based on their past bargain-basement releases, it’s almost a sure bet that it’ll be inexpensive.

The WordsGear offers an amazingly sharp 5.6-inch TFT display with a 1024×600 pixel resolution (that’s about 211 pixels per inch.) This means reading small type should be no problem, and easy on the eyes. Thanks to a special touch sensitive grip, it’s designed to be controlled with a single hand, so you can even use it while standing up on the train or bus.

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Since the display isn’t one of those electrostatic ones, it can also handle moving images, and cam play MPEG4 video clips. There’s also AAC and WMA audio playback, and you can listen to your tunes while reading. Content is stored on SD cards, providing plenty of expandability. The rechargeable battery should give you about 6 hours of reading on a single charge.

There’s a huge catalog of e-books for the device (all in Japanese, though) available from Saidoku. From what I can tell, you can load up your own PDF documents so you won’t be limited to Japanese content.

The Wordsgear can be ordered from gadget importer Dynamism for $479 (which is a significant premium over the price in Japan, which works out to about $350.) I’m hoping Panasonic will decide to make an English language version at some point, but I’m not holding my breath.

E Ink’s new Vizplex display modules have a new switching mechanism which will allow the displays to refresh almost twice as fast as prior displays. In addition, the new units will be 20 percent brighter than the earlier models.

Previously, refresh (switch speed) was rated at 1200ms, while the new version will switch at 740ms. In addition, the new displays will support 8 levels of grey, versus the 4 levels in previous models. All of these improvements should lead to higher quality electronic book readers and other e-paper devices within the next year or so. Display panels will come in a variety of sizes ranging from 1.9 to 9.7-inches diagonal.

[via MobileRead]

At this week’s CEATEC show in Tokyo, Fujitsu showed off a prototype of a 7.8-inch paper-thin panel that can show 4,096 colors. The device shown was in a rigid eBook reader device, but the technology is capable of being used in flexible displays as well. In addition, this new prototype does not require that power be applied to display the image once it’s drawn, reducing power consumption significantly.

Refesh times are still a little slow – ranging from one to four seconds, depending on image complexity.

[via Macworld UK and Akihabara News]