The “mirasol” technology mimics iridescent butterfly wings by deploying charged, colour-inducing membranes over a layer of mirror. It’s a technology that, if integrated into Kindles today as-is, would increase battery life by an estimated 20 per cent.

Instead, Qualcomm uses that extra power efficiency to drive colour and higher refresh rates for smooth video. They contend that a Kindle with their more capable display could run about a day with its current battery.

The catch? The lead photo is a non-functional prototype (with a functional, frozen-image display). Qualcomm is offering the tech to third-party partners, and they expect you to see mirasol tech on the market by late 2010. [SlashGear]

It’s cost-effective. Yeah, at $US260 it’s the same price as the Kindle 2, but you’re getting so much more for your money: Wi-Fi, native PDF support, an SD slot and that crazy second screen makes it seem out of the Kindle’s league. It makes the Sony Reader and iRex look absurdly overpriced and the Plastic Logic Que look like a shot in the dark.

Lending and Sharing. One of my main objections to the Kindle and other readers is that most of my books come from friends, rather than book stores. The Nook realises that and integrates a two-week lending period — plenty of time for a quick read. Plus, you can lend to tons of different devices: Mac, PC, iPhone, iPod Touch, PC, Mac, BlackBerry or Windows Mobile (soon).

Sharing is also done really well: As opposed to the Kindle, which only lets you read purchased eBooks on a same-account iPhone or iPod Touch, the Nook lets you read on any device supported, the most important of which are PC and Mac. So you and your significant other could read the same book at the same time, on whatever devices you each prefer. The Kindle, in contrast, doesn’t support PC and Mac at all — but we’d be willing to bet Amazon is rethinking that decision right about now. Plus, the Nook syncs both your place in the book and any highlights or annotations you’ve made, which could be great for students.

Free in-store reading. You’ll be able to take the Nook to any of Barnes & Noble’s gajillion stores and read one eBook, for free, each time — the same way you might wander into the store, pick up a book and read it for an hour or two. Barnes & Noble is really thinking about how people actually read, which is a great sign: This kind of feature makes the Kindle feel like it’s forcing you to change your reading habits rather than adapting to them.

And potential Nook customers will be able to go into a retail store with which they’re comfortable and play around with the actual device, an advantage not shared by the Kindle or any other reader. Given Matt’s impressions of the Nook, I think seeing the hardware in person will convince a lot of people to buy it.

Head-turning looks. The Kindle 1 was, um, distinctive, and the Kindle 2 is inoffensive and sleek enough, but the Nook has legitimate style. As Matt said, “it makes even the relatively benign-looking Kindle 2 seem like it was beaten with an ugly stick”.

Android. There are two things to be excited about when it comes to Android. First is the legit apps, which B&N seems open to— in today’s presentation, John wrote “They, ahem, ‘haven’t announced’ anything about app development, but they’re comfortable using the phrase ‘when we do,’ which is veeeery promising.” My personal most-wanted app? Pandora (or Slacker, or Last.FM).

Secondly, there’s the more, well, illicit possibilities: The Nook both runs Android (which we already know is easily and enthusiastically modified) and has a microUSB jack, which should make for easy hacking. Imagine user-created skins, apps, games (in case reading gets boring) — the possibilities are just about endless. The Nook already supports PDF natively (yes!) but we could definitely see it hacked to embrace other formats like DOC.

The second screen. Yeah, it’s weird, and we wouldn’t have believed it if it didn’t, you know, exist, but it just makes so much sense: Browsing for books on e-ink is an exercise in frustration, and touchscreen e-ink is even worse. With its capacitive touchscreen, the Nook offers a keyboard and Cover-Flow-esque browsing without the awkwardness and lethargy of e-ink, but it also opens the door for multitasking. You’ll be able to read a book and control your music at the same time, and because the music browser will be on the LCD screen, it won’t look like e-inked crap. It should also support photo browsing and the ability to set your own wallpaper.

Battery life. The Nook’s 10-day battery life may not be quite as long as the Kindle 2’s 14 days, but 10 days is still insane — especially if we think about the tablets that will vie to make eBook readers obsolete. Whenever the Apple tablet is announced, you can bet its battery life will be measured in hours, not days. Plus, the Nook’s battery is replaceable, always a welcome decision (you could have a spare battery, and when yours does eventually die, it’s easy to replace).

Both 3G and Wi-Fi. I’m not exactly sure about the benefits of Wi-Fi right now, but given the possibilities of Android, it’s essential that the Nook includes it. In the future, we may want to download files bigger than eBooks—apps, games, videos, whatever—and Wi-Fi will be vital once the potential of the Nook is unlocked. Plus, there could well be Wi-Fi-only features of the kind AT&T wouldn’t support: Streaming content, web browsing, VoIP, whatever. Wi-Fi is a killer feature not for what it does right now, but for what it could allow the Nook could do in the future.

It’s an ugly little mutant, like a Courier screwed an EeePC and Kindle. The e-Ink screen’s 9.7 inches—same as the Kindle DX—and readers ePub and PDF files. It’ll let you take notes with stylus, or tap them out on a keyboard. On the Android side, which will apparently let you run full Android apps, you’ve got a 10.1-inch, 1024×600 screen, which you can use to look at images from books (in full color?). Like any good anything that does everything, it also records video and audio. For wireless, it’s got Wi-Fi and optional 3G, along with Bluetooth for external keyboards.

Admittedly, I kind of like the idea of a reader I can use to browse the internet too, but I just can’t do it on something this hideous. And, I really can’t abide stupid capitalisation patterns, like eDGe. It’s $US500, if you can. [Entourage via Cnet]]

Features of the Nook include a wireless connection to download books from the retailer’s online e-bookstore and an e-paper display from E-Ink Corp. that is separate from the colour controls.

The only discrepancy we’ve found with our original story is that B&N was not priced lower than the Kindle, as our sources said it might be. It’s tied at $US259. But given the lending feature and colour screen, a price match may be more than enough to compete with.

They also reveal the name as “Nook”. It’s kind of dumb. [WSJ via Engadget]

The Barnes and Nobles eReader project, set to be revealed next week, has been under development for years, with several devices of varying size and capability in the pipeline. First rumours said it would have a colour e-ink screen. Then people said it didn’t. They were both kind of right: The layout will feature a black and white e-ink screen like the Kindle has — and a multitouch display like an iPhone underneath other. Pow!

More details and photos of the Barnes and Noble E-Ink/LCD reader here:

The first screen is a 6-inch e-ink display with an 800×600 pixel resolution. That’s standard for eBooks, with this screen having similar refresh and contrast as the second generation Kindle’s. The second display, however, is as wide as the e-ink display but is a multitouch LCD that is meant to be used as the sole interface for browsing swiftly through coloured book covers (like Apple’s coverflow, but books instead of Album art) and buying “rather than forcing e-ink do things it was not made for”. It is 480×144 pixels in size and has a resolution of 150dpi.

The choice of two different screens (and techs) on one device serves to overcome the shortcomings in e-ink, which lacks of richness and interactivity; and LCD’s eye strain and battery drain. (The LCD will remain inactive while books are being read.) Contrast this with the Kindle which uses the e-ink display to emulate a slow menu system and requires a physical keyboard for searching. Likewise, Sony’s e-ink readers with touchscreen layers have reduced visibility. The B&N reader has none of these issues. [editor's note: In theory.]

The interface has a few buttons. According to photos below, there are two sets of next/previous page buttons, as the Kindle has. But there are also buttons for search, home, “BN” which it is safe to assume is for accessing the store, and a back button. There’s also an icon for a person, with a dot under it, which is for user profile, important for the device’s social networking hooks. The reader is expected to have book lending features between friends and publishing of excerpts on Facebook and Twitter, but that may be cut before launch.

The carrier attached to the reception bars at the top of those photos might be Verizon or Sprint, but Barnes & Noble, wise to Amazon’s international plans ahead of the public (corporate espionage!) may have gone with a carrier more capable of bringing their books internationally, more naturally, meaning a GSM carrier. I’m unsure.

Pricing is yet unknown, but no matter what, it was planned to be sold at less than the price of a Kindle, with the majority of revenue made up through book sales.

What’s interesting is that B&N will sell the books it also publishes (yes, remember, they are also a publisher and not just a shop) at a deep discount compared to print editions. And the device will have some sort of access to all books scanned by the Google Books project; probably books that are out of print.

The name of the gadget, which I cannot reveal and may have changed anyhow, is freaking terrible. I hope they change it before it ships.

When a (claimed) Barnes & Noble rep said that the company’s imminent eBook reader would be colour, some folks over at Plastic Logic, B&N’s hardware partner, were listening intently. Mainly because they had no idea what he was talking about.

Says the company:

The video report is inaccurate and the individual (who was apparently filmed while attending a trade show was not an authorised Barnes & Noble spokesperson) was misinformed.

We are excited to have Barnes & Noble powering the Plastic Logic e-commerce store. While colour is on Plastic Logic’s roadmap, it is not on the map for the Spring of 2010. Plastic Logic has said for quite some time it is working on colour, but not for a product in the coming year

So not only was the dude wrong, he might not have even been a Barnes & Noble representative at all. Which is frustrating, sure, but also kind of awesome.

In light of all this drama, let’s take a step back to the innocent days, you know, before the Fall of Rumour. Here’s what we had: Months ago, B&N was tied to Plastic Logic in a fleeting rumour that the two would make an eBook reader together. Since then, B&N has opened their store to others, but fuelled the rumour of a branded reader with an FCC filing. Then the WSJ stuck their necks out to say that the reader is coming as early as next month.

Things got interesting when we got a tip from within B&N that the device would run Android, which is a categorically fantastic idea. And finally, an October 20 release date re-materialised, alongside a theory that the reader would allow person-to-person book sharing.

And so now, as then, we sit waiting. Just, a little wiser. [PCPro via Geek]

All-in-One Media Tablet or E-Ink Book Reader(poll)

Electronic Ink Uses No Power While the Screen Is Static: Great news for when you go on a long holiday in a place without electricity. Or if you read really slowly. I do neither very often. Of course, it’s impossible to say bad things about long battery life. But the kind of reading I do is generally around the house, and my house has power plugs. And I only need a few hours of battery life in such a device to get my daily reading quota in, so this argument doesn’t hold water for me when on a plane or at the park.

E-Ink Causes Little Eye Strain: Because e-ink is not constantly refreshing like a traditional gadget screen, it doesn’t wear your eyes out. That’s the theory, but yeah, I don’t really complain about reading on LCDs either. And I do that for 12 hours a day. In fact, when LCD monitors came out, the argument for them was that they strained the eye less than CRTs. The youngest generations are already growing up staring at devices with glowing screens—are they all going to go blind as a result? I’m not going to lie, I think that reading e-ink is soothing, but it’s not the most important thing in display tech, especially when I already know I can stare at a computer all day without issues.

Black-and-White vs Colour: The majority of books don’t need to be in colour, but there plenty of reasons why you would want it: children’s books, photography books and cookbooks, to name a few. Well, you can have it! There’s talk about colour e-ink, but what we’ve seen so far isn’t very pretty, and those screens will still be unable to refresh in a way that would support video. Amazon’s boss Jeff Bezos says that a colour Kindle is “multiple years away”, though Plastic Logic’s Barnes & Noble reader may be full colour.

The real alternative is LCD. It’s already in colour (in case you never noticed) but it has to improve its power management. The key to this is becoming more transreflective: Some screens are designed to be seen with ambient light (like e-ink) and operate with relatively low power, but when needed, they can get a boost from a nice even backlight. There are plenty of transreflective techs—including panels from Mary Lou Jepsen’s PixelQi, which started out as the screen first seen on OLPC’s XO—that’ll be available in the coming years.

E-ink Refreshes About As Fast As You Can Turn a Page: Good enough for books, but the future of media is—kill me for saying this—multimedia. Moving, alive, living and interactive. We’re talking about moving video and charts, as well as hyperlinks. All the live action of the web with the strengths of print. E-ink is superior for replicating paper, but it can’t even support real-time cursor movements or button presses, let alone video. Besides, what’s the relative amount of time you spend reading books versus your other media consumption? I bet, as a gadget geek, you spend a lot more time reading web pages and other modern forms of media. Which brings me to…

E-Ink is the Best Tech For Digital Dead Tree Replication: There’s no doubt at all that e-ink is a great tech for replicating black-and-white dead tree content read at a snail’s pace, while you’re miles away from power. But even if they solve the colour problem, there are a few more nasty items on the to-do list. Sony has all but proven that any kind of backlighting and finger touch interface destroys the benefits of e-ink. The touchscreen Sony models are not easy on the eyes, because of their tremendous glare. The so-called touchscreen readers from iRex are actually powered by Wacom pen technology — you can’t turn a page with your finger.

Crippled as these more “advanced” readers are, they still don’t come close to approaching the functionality of a true tablet. The Apple and Microsoft tablets will be capable of decent book presentation, but will also play back TV, movies, music, web pages and hybridised print media. Movements of your finger (in fact, many fingers) will be registered in real time, and if it gets too dark, you’ll be able to bump up the brightness without the screen suddenly looking like a 1930s cinema ticket booth.

The WSJ has sources close to the matter harping on about a pre-holiday release, and that throw a few details out as chum:

The device is expected to feature a six-inch screen from digital-paper maker E-Ink Corp. with touch input and a virtual keyboard, like the one used on Apple Inc.’s iPhone. The Barnes & Noble device is expected to also use a wireless connection to download books from the online e-book store that the books retailer unveiled in July, those people said.

A six-inch screen? An onscreen keyboard, huh? That’s almost…phonelike? Which is weird, because a tipster, who (convincingly) claims to work for Barnes & Noble, chiefly with mobile apps, passed me an extremely interesting little nugget: Barnes & Nobles reader will be the first on the market to run Android.

Think about it. It’s a smallish device, and we’ve seen Android on bigger screens. Wireless connectivity is built in. Apps would be a huge boon. Oh, and E-Ink Android drivers have already been demonstrated on video. Simply put, this would—or I guess, will—be pretty fantastic. And from the looks of it, we won’t have to wait long to find out. [WSJ via Engadget]

The video was shot by IntoMobile. As they describe it, the tech sounds like a massive DLP chip — that is, a panel covered with tiny reflective mirrors. Each mirror can change colour but it’s a passive screen, with no backlight (like most LCDs) and no self-illumination (a la OLED). They get lit up by whatever light is in the room. Saving energy is the key here — anytime you eliminate a light source, you cut way down on the juice. No word on when this will appear on devices, but it’s Qualcomm, so you can bet there will at least be some experimental products before too long.

Speaking of experimental products, Time’s Josh Quittner points out, on his blog, that several of Qualcomm’s components could go together to make a formidable eBook device. Besides this screen, they’ve got the multi-network mobile chipset (Gobi), a respectable mobile CPU (Snapdragon), and a powerful media delivery system (MediaFLO). Forget the Kindle — who needs Amazon? Oh right, books. [IntoMobile via Netly]