Pictures and details on Barnes and Noble’s new eReader

The Barnes and Noble eReader. Photo from Gizmodo.

The most interesting thing about the B&N offering is that it contains two screen technologies on one surface. The top screen is your typical 6-inch 600×800 E-Ink display while the bottom quarter features a color 480×144 150dpi LCD multi-touch screen used for utility and QWERTY input (similar to the iPhone). The idea is to have color book library that you can flip through a la iTunes albums. The as-of-yet unnamed device (update: it’s labeled the “Nook“) has page forward/backward buttons on each site, but that represents the only real buttons on the eReader.

There’s no further mention of the eReader running Android — a rumor that we posted earlier. There’s also a question as to how much this combining of LCD and E-Ink will decrease battery life. E-Ink displays are notoriously low energy consumers with most eReaders on the market lasting 6,000-8,000 pageflips before needing a charge. The LCD screen could drain that number by quite a bit depending on how much it is used.

And while there’s no official name given for the device, take a look at the back of the case which has a logo of a medieval or renaissance era scribe. Gizmodo stated that they disliked the name of the unreleased device (and that it possibly could have changed by the time of the release). Are we looking at the B&N Gutenberg or Dante? Or it could be something generically bad as the “Reader Gal” as the Gizmodo image gallery for the device is titled. UPDATE: It seems that B&N has gone with Nook.

See the rest of the eReader pictures after the jump.