Leaked Barnes & Noble e-Reader is a Powerful Multitouch Hybrid

Take a Kindle, and put a multitouch screen where the keyboard
and navigation buttons go, and you've got the Barnes & Noble
e-reader.

We're still a week away from Barnes & Noble's big e-reader
announcement, but we've know they've had something cooking
for a while now. And today, our pals at Gizmodo hit the
mother load: leaked shots of a forthcoming dual-screen device
that is three-quarters e-ink and one-quarter (wait for it)
color multitouch.

The most intriguing thing, of course, is the multitouch panel
on the lower 25 percent of the screen. From the photos, it
looks to me like all it does is replace hardware controls,
like a physical keyboard and menu navigation. It does,
however, cause an eyebrow raise (or two). First: Will those
menus be akin to a pre-App-Store iPhone with just a few
pre-installed apps, or will B&N release a development kit for
outsiders to create their own e-book widgets and mini-apps?
Second: Won't all that color and fancy menu deliciousness
murder battery life?

Other than that, details are scarce. But there are some
pretty strong assumptions to be made. For example, at this
point in the e-reader game, it'd be foolish to not have 3G
connectivity, so it feels safe to assume B&N is wise to that
and has something in the works. As far as supported formats,
the reader won't be a Kindle-like closed platform and have
a library filled by many publishers in addition to Google
Books.