Next week’s big Nook announcement has come early thanks to some leaked documents. Aside from the Nook Color getting Hulu Plus and the unveiling of the new Nook Tablet, the Nook Touch is getting a price drop down to $99 and a couple of new features to boot.
That’s $40 less than the Nook Touch sells for now, and unlike the $99 Kindle Touch, the Nook Touch doesn’t have advertisements, and it’s funny how B&N make sure to point that fact out—the Kindle Touch without ads is $139, and the basic non-touchscreen Kindle 4 is $109 without ads. What is Amazon going to do to counter this, I wonder?
Aside from the new $99 price, the picture above reveals a couple of interesting new features. The first thing that jumps out is the part about multi-touch. The Nook currently doesn’t support multi-touch, but the infrared screen technology that it uses does. The new Sony PRS-T1 and Kindle both boast multi-touch so it isn’t surprising that B&N are adding it.
They all use the same touchscreens so the Nook’s must be able to be activated with a firmware update. In fact, I forgot to mention the other day when testing different video games on the Nook Touch that the game Meteor Blitz somehow got the Nook to use multi-touch. You have to touch two parts of the screen, one spot to move the ship and another to fire projectiles. I wasn’t expecting it to recognize both inputs simultaneously but somehow it did.
The other new feature is something called Best-Text Technology. There aren’t any details at this point in time, but it likely means they’ve updated and refined the fonts. Also mentioned on another document is the fact the page-turns are 25% faster than any other ereader.
Unfortunately there’s no mention of adding a web browser. The Nook Touch already has a hidden web browser, but it doesn’t work very well. It runs Opera great once hacked, though.
More details to come next week at B&N’s Nook announcement. Subscribe to keep updated!
Incoming Nook Tablet!!!
How does a non-rooted nook benefit from multi-touch without a browser? Maybe through the store displays or giving readers the ability to increase text size?
I am skeptical whether their page turns are 25 faster than the new Kindles.
Amazon may not do anything.
Kindle touch has audio capabilities, including digital audiobooks.
Plus, many consider the ads a plus.
Or they might drop the K4SO to $49. 🙂
@ $49 ereader would be pretty remarkable in terms of being able to put this device in the hands of a lot students across the world.
I’ve been thinking about biting when the Touch hit $99.
Now, it’s close to Christmas, so I’m going to have to wait until after to actually make up my mind. Santa may already be looking into it now that I brought it up today.
I can’t get worked up about the lack of audio, I’ve got an MP3 player for that, and I really can NOT stand books on tape/CD, although my wife loves them.
My current ereader (Palm TX) can also play music while I read, but I never use it.
@purcelljf I’ve seen them side by side. The nook touch page turns are slightly faster.
Wait, does this mean the Nook I already own will get the update? (Sorry if this is a stupid question.) It would be nice to see some new gestures on the Nook.
I got a referb Nook about three weeks ago. I’m a little upset at myself that I didn’t pay any attention to if the companies were expected to release new devices soon or not. I could have saved myself a bit of money if I had… Guess it’s not a total loss though, I really like my Nook as it is! Next time I’m in the market, I’ll just have to take a closer look.
Yes the update will be released to all Nook Touches. It will download and install automatically, provided it’s not rooted. I’m hoping it comes out on Monday when they make the announcement.
The best update for Nook would be the ability to download library books direct without having to connect to a PC. I haven’t heard how well that works with the new Sony. Is that possible with an update?
First they would have to add a competent web browser, then it would work. You can do just that with a rooted Nook Touch using the OverDrive Android app. It does work well on the Sony, here’s a video review.
>>>The best update for Nook would be the ability to download library books direct without having to connect to a PC. I haven’t heard how well that works with the new Sony. Is that possible with an update?
According to reports it works OK on Sony Reader.
If you root the Nook Touch ,you can use the OverDrive app to get library books:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/printthread.php?t=1208312
For those who might be interested in rooting, I just did the latest in a looooong series of posts today, here:
Rooted Nook Touch Notes For November 4th 2011
http://mikecanex.wordpress.com/2011/11/04/rooted-nook-touch-notes-for-november-4th-2011/
I am sort of surprised there has been no custom ROMs created for the Nook Touch. At $79 for a refurb, I might buy it again, if there was a custom rom.
>>>Yes the update will be released to all Nook Touches. It will download and install automatically, provided it’s not rooted. I’m hoping it comes out on Monday when they make the announcement.
For those of us who have rooted our Touch, following Nathan’s steps, are then out of luck or is there a work around?
Just follow these steps to unroot and restore your Nook back to original firmware.