Bruce Atkinson

Archive for the ‘Android’ Category

I have been using my Nook Color for about 4 months now. The first two months I experimented with various Android operating systems on an SD card. The Nook Color has the wonderful ability of recognizing and booting an OS that is on the SD card leaving your original OS untouched. If you want the stock Nook Color you just remove the SD card and reboot.

After trying HoneyComb, (Ok, but not very stable on the Nook Color) and Froyo 2.2 (frustrating with the virtual buttons that you need to use) I decided to give CyanogenMod 7 a try. I had heard Jerry and Phil from Android Central rave about CyanogenMod on other devices, so I figured I should try it out. I found these two articles about choosing which OS and choosing where to install (EMMC or SD), and an article on installing CynaogenMod on the SD Card.

• How to pick your Nook Color Operation System and Install Options
• Complete Guide to Installing CyanogenMod 7 on the Nook Color

They are two very good articles. Since I liked the ability to leave my stock Nook Color available I chose the CyanogenMod on the SD card option. I had already tried Froyo and Honeycomb on SD cards and I didn’t experience any SD card related problems with either. I do believe a lot of people that have problems have bad SD cards. I chose a 16 Gig Sandisk (Class 4) and it has worked fine.

After two weeks of using CynogenMod 7 on the Nook Color I decided to go for the Overclock kernel. The 2nd article above contains links on how to use Dalingrin’s OC kernel. I am able to use the 1 ghz kernel without any problems. The Nook Color is very responsive at 1 ghz. With both Froyo and Honeycomb I got inconsistent response from the tablet. Some portions of the tablet seemed to require more pressure or a couple of taps in order to work. With the CynogenMod 7 there are no signs of that problem.

One problem with the Nook Color is the lack of buttons. There is only the Home button, power button, and volume. In Froyo the solution is to provide virtual buttons that float around and get in the way. In Honeycomb buttons are provided at the bottom of the screen, making this a non-issue. CynagenMod 7 modifies Gingerbread (Android 2.30) so that the status bar is on the bottom and puts menu, back, and search buttons on the bottom left. This works perfectly and the status bar can be collapsed so it isn’t visible.

I have now been using my Nook Color for 6 weeks with the OC kernel and it is still working great. The only time I have to reboot is when I do a lot of updates from the app store and that is just something that I do as a habit. On my phone (Droid X) I once did about 20 updates at once and didn’t reboot my phone. About a week later I needed to reboot my phone and it wouldn’t boot. It took me a bit to recover from that. Ever since then I always reboot after updates to make sure that nothing has been broken.