Pandigital may be better known on these pages for their digital photo frames, but the company have another use for a 7-inch LCD: an ereader. The Pandigital Novel eschews E Ink for a full color touchscreen LCD display, Android OS and WiFi b/g/n, the latter being used for wireless connection to Barnes & Noble’s eBookstore.
That means support not only for purchasing ebooks, newspapers and magazines, but use of B&N’s LendMe functionality that allows readers to share texts for up to 14 days. LendMe will work with B&N’s PC/Mac ereader clients and, we’re presuming, the company’s own nook ereader. Meanwhile there’s also multimedia support, including MP3, AAC and WAV audio, JPEG, BMP, PNG and GIF images and MPEG4 video; content can be saved to the 1GB of internal memory or to an SD or MMC memory card.
Battery life is tipped at up to six hours from a full charge, and there’s an orientation sensor for page-flips, integrated desk stand and a 2.5mm headphone socket. The whole thing measures in at 5.5 x 7.5 x 0.5 inches and weighs 16oz.
Pandigital expect the Novel to go on sale in June 2010, priced at $199.99.