Nook Simple Touch
Over the last wee while I’ve written sporadically about the Kindle ebook reader, with a wide range of posts. Well the BIG news in the ebook reader world was the complete CRASH in prices of the Nook range, making the Nook Simple Touch a staggering £29!! This uses the same 6” e-ink screen as the Kindle and comes with wifi and 2Gb of onboard memory, but also has a microSD card slot taking up to a further 32Gb.
That, on its own, for £29 is a real steal. However what marks the Nook out is its amazing hackability!!! The first thing to note is that the Nook runs a fairly vanilla version of Android 2.1 which is new enough to remain a very useful base OS. What needs to be done is to gain root access and then allow installation of other apps. After a bit of headscratching this is the route I went down:
1. DOWNGRADE the firmware: the current Nooks ship with firmware v1.2. The existing access to root doesnt seem to work with this, however this site uses a version of ClockworkMod to install v1.1 from the microSD card
2. Install TouchNooter: great steps over at this site to install TouchNooter which not only gets root access but installs some very useful utilities.
3. Setup the Nook: there are a variety of things that will make life easier:
a. You MUST set up your GMail account in order to link the device to Googe Play and so allow you to download apps. Play might need 24 hours before it loads.
b. Install Search Market: as this is Android 2.1, the “new” Play doesnt work. Marketplace allows you to download apps, but one drawback is you cant *search* for apps. This app, lets you do that!
c. Nook Color Tools (installed) allows you to “sideload” apps from the SD card
d. ES File Explorer (Play) allows you to roam the entire file system, get FTP access and move files around
e. Nook Touch Tools (installed) allows you to modify the functions of the buttons on the Nook. I have the “n” button access the Nook menu, the TL button goes “home” and the “TR” goes “back”. Long-press on the “n” button switches between portrait and landscape.
r. Opera Classic (Play) makes a good lightweight web browser
g. K9 Email (Play) makes a great fully functional email client
h. The NoRefresh app mentioned in the article in (2) allows higher refresh rates on a per-app basis which is great for apps where you have more dynamic content
i. Button Savior: this app comes pre-installed but might pass you by. It actually mimics hardware buttons (home/back particularly) in software allowing you to access them from within any app. You will see a faint button halfway up the screen on the right. Tap that and a faint menu will appear giving you access to these functions. Very useful!
j. Other useful apps: Quickboot (quickly reboot), AdFree (remove ads), Aldiko (PDF/ebook reader), Kindle (which of course lets you sync to your Kindle account!). Some more great apps listed here
Does this make the Nook the greatest mobile platform around??? I don’t know, but for size of screen, battery life, apps and cost its pretty darn amazing!