App Review: NOOK for Android

Along with Kindle and Borders, NOOK has recently added an Android eReader app to their family of readers. While the NOOK tablet, which runs on a custom version of Android, has been around since November 2009, why they are just releasing an Android mobile companion now is a bit of a mystery.

After doing the customary app installation and setting up your account, you’re presented with the home menu, which gives you some title suggestions as well as a introduction to NOOK eBook. In the menu, you have the usual sorting options as well as a filter, sync, shop, my account, and page turn.

The shop and sync options are a redundant feature of the menu as both are already on the home screen. Shop and sync do work well on either the home screen or in the menu settings, but the inclusion of both seems poorly thought out. I could almost see the options being placed on the home screen first, and only later did the developers realize they would have nothing to fill out the menu settings. It’s this same lack of forethought that appears in the My Account option. Â Prior to selecting that option, I was expecting to see my billing and address information, possibly an order history. My Account gives no such information, rather it only tells you what you already know: your email address.

Moving onto the actual process of buying a book, I chose to browse via my PC and download the book to my device. Searching and reading summaries was nothing out of the ordinary. When looking in browse view, you can easily see which titles offer a free sample; when on a book summary page, the option for a sample is less evident. With the book cover displayed on the left, the eye will move to the right where the brightly colored Buy Now button is, and possibly miss the Get a Free Sample button, located halfway down the page in a neutral color.

Once a book is purchased, you’ll of course have to sync NOOK again for the title to display. Downloading the book seemed to take a little longer with NOOK than with Kindle. In the book, you have additional options to choose from; font, go to, details, sync, orientation, and library. The Font option lets you choose from 5 sizes of text in 8 different typefaces. There is no option to change page color. Â Also lacking in the menu is the ability to bookmark your page. This is done by tapping a + sign in the top right corner. I found the bookmark action to be simply okay; it does what it is supposed to do, but I would have preferred the option be in the menu. Reading with the app was again nothing out of the ordinary, though NOOK does have a nice page-turning animation.

NOOK also has a lending feature called LendMe, which is an interesting option in itself. The is idea is good; share any book in your NOOK library with a friend. As long as the friend has a version of NOOK, they get to read the book for free for up to 14 days. After that, it disappears from their library. Sounds good, right? It is, until you get to the catch; if you lend a book, you can’t access said book until it’s returned to you. It would seem NOOK is trying to emulate a physical books. Nice, but as we all know, NOOK deals with digital books; treating a digital book like a physical one is silly.

Overall, NOOK for Android is a completely average eReader app. It does what it’s supposed to do without a lot of bells and whistles tacked on. If you already use Barnes & Noble as your online book source, then go ahead and get the app. Having used Amazon for many years as my book supplier, NOOK doesn’t have any features that would get me to move my business to BN.com. If you want to give NOOK a try, click HERE from your Android device or scan the code below.