There's a lot to be said for being first. Barnes & Noble beat the competition to the punch with the Nook Simple Touch with GlowLight -- an e-reader with built-in front lighting. And though we busted the company's chops with regards to its claims of keeping marriages together, the feature really did feel like the next big step forward for e-readers. Naturally, then, Amazon and Kobo released similar offerings soon after, with front lighting that frankly blew the Nook out of the water. As those companies further iterated their lines, Barnes & Noble maintained radio silence, something many chalked up to troubles with its hardware division.
A year and a half after the release of its last reader, the GlowLight has finally returned with an abbreviated name and an improved feature set. The new Nook GlowLight ($119) features a revised design, weighs noticeably less than its predecessor and, most notably, brings an improved front light. But while it ushers in some welcome tweaks, the loss of the Simple Touch name also marks the abandonment of some beloved features that helped set the line apart in the first place.
The company's shaved a few fractions of an inch off the device, too -- down to 0.42 inch from 0.47. At the same time, it kept the height and width the same at 6.5 x 5 inches. That's thanks in no small part to the retention of sizable bezels that will give you a place to rest your thumb while reading so you don't accidentally trigger a page turn on the touchscreen. Sadly, however, the physical page-turn buttons have bitten the dust. We asked a Barnes & Noble rep why the company opted to pull the plug on one of the Nook's more distinguishing physical traits and didn't get a satisfactory answer -- just a sense that they had outstayed their welcome as remnants of a time before E Ink touchscreens. A bummer, that.
A quick scan around the sides reveals a glaring omission: the microSD slot. That's right, Barnes & Noble has put the kibosh on expandable memory here. We'll admit that we didn't really use it on our old Nooks -- the built-in memory and cloud storage have us pretty much covered. Still, it's a bummer to see the company abandon another feature that helped set its offerings apart from the Kindle. All's not lost, though. You might not be able to outfit your reader with 32GB, but the company has at least expanded the internal storage to 4GB (2.5 gigs of which you'll actually be able to use). That's twice that what both the Paperwhite and last-gen Nook have to offer.
The processor speed remains the same at 800MHz, which has since been outdone by the Kindle's new 1GHz chip. Rated battery life remains the same too, even if Barnes & Noble has adjusted its claims from "two months" to "eight weeks." This time, the company is also claiming that you should be able to enjoy that kind of runtime even when the front light is on (at the default setting, mind). That usage is based on 30 minutes of reading time a day, with the WiFi switched off.
Source : Enagdget
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