Three Days with NOOKcolor

[richard.pieri-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org (Richard Pieri)]

I had some money left over from my tax returns so I figured why not obtain one of these.

The stock OS is based on Android 2.1 (Eclair) with some customizations made by B&N.  The nutshell version is that the company wants a closed environment to deliver a high-quality reader, and the devs there are working on a B&N-centric app store.  So, if you're looking for an ebook reader... get a Kindle :).  I don't say that because of B&N's policies; I say it because I think that Kindle is a superior reader.

On the other hand, if you're looking for a cheap Android-based tablet and you are willing to void your warranty or muck around with SD cards then NOOKcolor is a great purchase.  All of the options require a miniSD card.  Unlike most (all?) Android phones, NOOKcolor (Nc) does not have a recovery boot.  Instead, the device boots from the miniSD slot if a bootable card is installed.  This makes it well-nigh impossible to permanently brick.  Even if you destroy all of the partitions on the internal memory (eMMC) it can still be booted from uSD, and then adb can be used to restore filesystem backups.  So, here are the options.

Auto-Nooter is an automated tool that roots the stock OS, installs a minimal set of Google Apps along with multi-touch for those apps, enables the Market and Gmail, and adds a few other odds and ends.  This is the most stable root option since it uses the stock OS and drivers for everything.  This is important for video playback as none of the other options have working hardware acceleration, yet.  It has some glitches, like resetting USB debug mode on reboot, but other than that it is eminently usable.

Nookie Froyo is the first of the SD-based installs and requires a 2GB uSD card.  It's a simple image written to a card with dd, plugged in and booted.  Very simple, very easy and requires no modifications to the stock OS.  On the other hand it is quite buggy, and running the OS on a class 4 card is slow.  Class 6 or 10 is recommended.

CyanogenMod 7 is already the most polished non-stock OS option.  CM7 is based on the Gingerbread AOSP and is ported to almost everything that can run Android and can take a third-party OS install.  While most phones have RC1 available, the Nook version is still in experimental nightly builds, although some consider it stable enough (mostly) to be a daily driver.  CM7 is an eMMC installation, so it will wipe the stock OS and void your warranty.  Note: the build target is called "encore".

A version of Honeycomb is now available as either an SD or eMMC installation.  This one is interesting because it is hacked together from the SDK version of the OS and drivers from stock.  It is the least-polished of the options but it is a nice proof of concept, demonstrating that Nc is capable of running Honeycomb.  The uSD version requires a 4GB card; the eMMC version needs a card big enough to hold the recovery flasher and the Honeycomb zip files.

The last option isn't really an option: it's waiting for B&N to release the Froyo/Gingerbread version of the stock OS.  That allegedly will happen some time this year and will probably include a number of NOOK-centric improvements along with the aforementioned B&N-branded app store.

Me?  I'm currently using the Auto-Nootered stock OS, primarily because of the video acceleration.  I'm looking at this as being a very good portable video device.  I will eventually switch over to CM7 once they have a release candidate ready.

--Rich P.