Thursday, January 20, 2011

The Rook Is Nooted

I finally gave in and rooted my NOOKcolor.

It was sooooo easy. I simply followed the step-by-step instructions here. The biggest problem I had was that my first USB SD adapter didn't work.

I used the Auto-Nooter variation. There are more details here. Auto-Nooter also:
  • Installs su and Superuser.apk
  • Installs Busybox
  • Installs Calendar and Calculator
  • Installs and enables Android Market, Gmail, Youtube
  • Enables Multi-touch for Android Apps
  • Enables Live Wallpapers
  • Enables Android Market and Gmail
  • App Auto Install (automatically install apps that you drop into the sdcards /data/app folder via USB)
  • Installs Soft Keys 3.0
  • Installs Genie Widgets
  • Installs Droid X Multi-touch Keyboard as an option
  • Adds a removable Custom Boot Animation
In addition to the basic rooting instructions, I also followed these to enable my Google Apps account. While this all worked fine, read through both of these posts a couple of times to see how they fit together.

I installed ADW.Launcher. I had gotten a recommendation for LauncherPro but I discovered that on the Nook you have to really hack at changing the apps in the dock bar.

I had one spontaneous reboot but it's been rock solid since then.

The latest root process even enables the Android Market so you can download whatever apps you'd like. I have downloaded ADW.Launcher, Home Switcher, Dropbox, greader (Google Reader RSS), Titanium Backup, Klondike Solitaire, and Angry Birds.

I used Home Switcher to make ADW.Launcher the default launcher. I changed the grid size on ADW.Launcher to 6 x 6. I'm not sure that's the "right" size but it's a good start.

The root process installs SoftKeys which lets you bring up the equivalent of the normal 4 buttons on the bottom of an Android screen.

To get youtube working, I had to use Titanium Backup and "wipe data" for youtube.

Pretty nice Android tablet for $249.

1 comment:

Mike Salzgeber said...

Got my Nook in last week and got it rooted with no issues. Have you disabled the phone services? While reviewing the battery stats, I stumbled across the issue that 50% of the CPU usage was going to a phone that doesn't exist on the Nook. Battery life should be much better now.