Barnes & Noble has issued a new firmware update for its NOOK e-readers. It includes some new features and enhancements, such as the NOOK HUB, which is the same system ported over from their Lenovo tablets. There is a new section where you can read the patch notes. New fonts are available in the reading app, and fixes for the time remaining in a chapter are at the bottom of the page.
The NOOK Hub is a new system available on e-readers now, before it was only on the latest generation of the Lenovo Tablet for NOOK that came out last year. The HUB still needs some work, since it was ported over from the tablet, so not all features work yet. However, there is a helpful feature since you can check for future updates and set a time of day when you want to install it, such as night or early morning, when you might not be reading on the device. Having persistent patch notes in the HUB is also good, since in the past, when new firmware was installed, it only showed up once on the splash screen when the update was installed and rebooted. At the bottom of the HUB is your NOOK e-reader, which includes the model number and the latest firmware version that has been installed.
The reading app has undergone a slight transformation. There is a new, larger system font that is called Gentium Book, which is easier on the eyes and has a better contrast on the e-paper display to read ebooks and is under the open font license. They removed the Georgia font, since it is owned by Microsoft and likely B& N did not want to pay the licensing fee anymore.
The bottom of the page (footer) has also been fixed. It is now similar to the Amazon Kindle and Kobo e-readers, with the time left in the chapter on the bottom left and the percentage of the book remaining on the right.
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.