Barnes & Noble has updated its NOOK app for Android phones and tablets, giving virtually any Android tablet much of the same functionality you’d expect if you purchased a NOOK Color device.

NOOK 2.6.1 for Android can run on any device with Android 2.1 and up, but you get a few special features if you install the app on an Android tablet with a high resolution display, including the ability to purchase magazine subscriptions or individual issues.

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One of the coolest new features in the Barnes & Noble NOOKcolor is support for picture books and interactive content for children’s books — the kind of thing that’s hard to do on a typical E Ink eBook reader with a slow screen refresh rate. Now it looks like Barnes & Noble is making those features available to iPad users as well, with a new NOOKkids app for the iPad.

Like other eBook apps for the iPad, NOOKkids is both a book store and an interactive eBook reader. You can purchase and download hundreds of titles from the Barnes & Noble store, and read them on your iPad. You get two books for free when you download the app.

NOOKkids can read stories out loud to your kids (in case you’re too lazy to do that yourself), and lets you zoom in on words or text as you read.

The NOOKkids app is available as a free download from the App Store.

via The Digital Reader

Barnes & Noble is planning to launch an updated version of its NOOK eBook app for Android later this week, and it will finally bring some pretty basic features that may help the app compete with similar eBook readers from Amazon, Kobo, and others.

Among the updated features are:

• “Go to” a page number
• Search within a book
• View highlights and notes
• Delete books from the library
• Easier way to side-load content

The new NOOK for Android (version 2.3) app will be available in the Android Market later this week.

My biggest problem with the original NOOK app is that it simply took up too much space on my phone. I’ll be curious to see if the update addresses that issue.

Barnes & Noble will also soon release version 1.5 of its software for the physical NOOK eBook reader, with support for synchronizing your data across devices, so you can pick up reading where you left off, no matter whether you’re using a PC, iPhone, Android device, or the NOOK device.

Barnes & Noble has offered an eBook reader for iOS touch for a while. But the company’s eBook strategy was starting to look a bit schizophrenic, with a Nook device available online and in-stores, Nook software for Google Android, but Barnes & Noble eReader-branded software for the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad.

Today Barnes & Noble is launching a fresh start, with the introduction of Nook apps for the iPad, iPhone, and PC.

The new strategy isn’t just about changing the names. The new apps also share some of the key features you’ll find on other Nook devices. That includes the ability to “lend” books to other Nook users.

There are also new features that are specific to each version. For instance, the iPad version has in-app content ratings, while the iPhone version includes cover art and text that’s customized for the iPhone 4 Retina display. Both the iPhone and iPad versions also let users customize their themes.

The Nook apps will synchronize your settings across multiple devices, allowing you to start reading a book on an iPhone or iPod touch — or even an Android phone, and pick up where you left off on an iPad since all of your Nook apps will remember the last page read on any device.

The new Nook apps for iPhone and iPad are available as free downloads from the App Store.

One of the new features in Google Android 2.2 Froyo is the ability to store applications on an SD card, freeing up space on your phone’s main memory. Developers need to enable this feature in their apps, so not every app available can be stored on an SD card, but I’ve already freed up plenty of storage space on my Nexus One by moving a handful of apps to my 8GB microSD card.

So I was pretty excited to learn that Barnes & Noble had released a new version of the Nook eBook reader for Android. When I first checked out the Nook app a few weeks ago, I was pretty impressed with its features, but underwhelmed by the fact that it took up more than 17MB of storage space — making it by far the largest app on my phone. I quickly uninstalled it.

Today I tried downloading the latest version of the Nook app and then I moved it to my SD card. You can see the results above. It still takes up more storage space than any other app on my device — and that’s main storage. When I uninstalled the Nook app, my phone storage available space jumped from about 28MB to 40MB.

In other words, moving an app to your SD card doesn’t actually move all of the files to your SD card. Some files will be left behind, and in the case of the Nook app, they still take up an awful lot of space. If you have a phone with a huge amount of internal storage space, or if you only plan to install a few apps, this might not be a problem. But with the Amazon Kindle app using less than 4MB and the Borders app taking up less than 1MB, it seems strange that Barnes & Noble’s eBook reader takes up so much space.

On the other hand, the latest version for the Kindel app also adds a few other features such a new search function in the library, four new themes, and new screen settings. You can also copy unencrypted ePUB files from a computer to your device and open them in the Nook app.

Nook for Android is available as a free download from the Android Market.

via Gizmodo

The good news is that Android users now have a choice of buying and reading eBooks with apps from Amazon, Borders, Kobo, or Barnes & Noble (not to mention free eBook apps such as Aldiko). That’s because Barnes & Noble is the latest major US booksellers to launch an Android app, with today’s introduction of Nook for Android.

Scan to download

The bad news is that the developers don’t seem to realize that most Android phones don’t have a ton of free store space for apps. The Nook installer is about 5MB, but after installing the app on my phone it took up 17.68MB of space. That makes it the largest app on my phone, by a longshot. Next up is Adobe Flash, which weighs in at 10.82MB. In fact the only app I’ve ever installed that was larger was Fennec (Firefox Mobile), but part of the reason I don’t keep Fennec installed on my phone is because it takes up 26MB of storage space.

Amazon Kindle for Android, by comparison takes up just 3.58MB, while the Borders app is just 888KB.

If you can get past the enormous file size, Nook for Android offers pretty much everything you’d expect from an eBook app. There’s a library showing books that have been downloaded to your device, an information page with a synopsis f each title, and a decent reader which lets you adjust fonts, add bookmarks, or lock screen orientation to portrait or landscape mode. There’s also a pretty nifty page-turn animation effect.

The Nook account synchronizes your digital library, bookmarks, and last read page settings with other Barnes & Noble eReader devices. That means if you have a physical Nook eBook reader, your settings will be transferred automatically. The same thing happens if you use the Barnes & Noble eReader for the iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad.

Nook for Android is available as a free download from the Android Market. The app supports Android 1.6 and up.

You can find more screenshots after the break.

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