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The Barnes & Noble NOOK Simple Touch Reader is a $139 eBook Reader with a 6 inch E Ink display, touchscreen navigation, and a battery that’s good for up to 2 months of run time. But one of the coolest things about this eReader is that it runs Google Android 2.1 under the hood and if you’re willing to put a little elbow grease into it you can root the tablet and install third party apps — including the Amazon Kindle app for Android.

That makes the NOOK a cross-platform eReader that just happens to be distributed by Barnes & Noble.

YouTube user Zonyl has posted the first hands-on video I’ve seen showing the Amazon Kindle app running on the NOOK. It works, but it’s a bit rough around the edges.

Amazon’s Android app was clearly designed for use with a color LCD display with full motion graphics, but the NOOK has a high contrast black and white display with a much slower screen refresh rate. So animated effects look absolutely awful.

Flipping from one page in an eBook to the next doesn’t look that bad, but the screen flickers far too much when you try to open your library view or adjust settings in the app.

If you’re thinking of picking up a NOOK for use as a cross-platform eBook reader, it will do the trick. But it’s not going to provide the same kind of experience using the Kindle app as you would get with a dedicated Kindle device.

via Mike Cane