Battle of the Budget Tablets - Nook Color vs. Galaxy Tab
by Vivek Gowri on May 25, 2011 12:52 AM ESTRooting the Nook Color
When you boot the Nook, you’re taken to this lovely 5 step process that registers you with B&N’s site (there’s no way around this unless you avoid the stock ROM entirely) and gets your device on to the internet. When you get through this, you’re taken to a startup page that lets you select whether you want a tutorial on how to use the Nook Color or whether you actually just want to use it. Uhhhhh, yeah, I think I’ll just go to the home screen, thanks.
The homescreen gets you thumbnails of the book covers you have downloaded, and bringing up the menu (with a soft button at the bottom of the screen) gives you the option to go to settings, the browser, market, list of applications, etc. You can tell it’s running Android, but it’s relatively dumbed down, presumably so that the general non-techy public doesn’t find themselves confused by the inner workings of Android.
The only thing that surprised me about the Nook OS in general is the amount of stuttering I saw. The original OS was pretty bad, and the update to Nook 1.2 (read: Froyo) fixed some of that, but you could still see the occasional dropped frame as you navigated through the OS. But I got sick of the Nook OS in about 5 minutes, so I went straight to XDA to get me some CM7.
CyanogenMod 7 is basically a community-built and supported ROM based on Gingerbread, and it’s pretty sweet. The rooting process was fairly straightforward, first installing ClockworkMod Recovery, then flashing CM7 and the associated Google apps (Mail, Market, Talk, etc) onto the device. The XDA developer forums are very helpful with rooting and flashing different ROMs onto these devices, and there’s a number of different customizations you can do, including overclocking (the Nook Color supports up to 1.2GHz) and various skins and enhancements.
I have to commend Barnes and Noble in all of this for being not discouraging rooting or hacking the device, when I talked to some of the Nook reps, they definitely understood that the NC was developed for people who weren’t tech enthusiasts, but the enthusiast market could do whatever they wanted with it. Unlike some of the larger handset manufacturers who go out of their way to discourage jailbreaking or rooting, this was a refreshing mindset for them to take.
So now that our Nook Color is all nice and Gingerbread-ified, let’s see what Samsung has in store.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
89 Comments
View All Comments
seamonkey79 - Wednesday, May 25, 2011 - link
I've got a Nook Color, and it took all of about 10 minutes to get all of the tools needed to flash a new ROM to it... now I've got a 1.1 Ghz (1.2 Ghz is available and stable on mine, but a little warmer than I like) tablet that in many ways performs better than my Droid Incredible does, especially when I pair the 3g from the DInc to the NC. Given the price I paid for it and the fact that it is a smashing book reader as well as all around good guy tablet, money well spent in my opinion :-)I've also read posts about people selling or trading their Galaxy Tabs for Nook Color after they bought one for a spouse or child and played with it a little bit.
KaarlisK - Wednesday, May 25, 2011 - link
What about the Creative Ziio 7? It also has a Cortex A8 and 512MB of RAM, though I have no idea about the capabilities and drivers of its GPU. Costs around $350 in Europe.mcnabney - Wednesday, May 25, 2011 - link
I wouldn't buy another Creative product on principle alone.Stanil - Wednesday, May 25, 2011 - link
The hardware on the Galaxy Tab Wi-Fi is different to the 3G model (at least in some markets). Gone are Bluetooth 3.0, HDMI out. The SOC is not Hummingburd, but a more cheap A8(OMAP 3630?) and the GPU is PowerVR530 not 540 as in the 3G model.http://www.samsung.com/us/mobile/galaxy-tab-wifi-o...
http://androidcommunity.com/wifi-only-galaxy-tab-7...
medi01 - Wednesday, May 25, 2011 - link
Recently bought Archos 7 Home Tablet for 129 Euro, actually as a video player in a car.You know, dear Anand, it has quite a good screen.
Remembering how (among ebook reader fans) Nook is mostly regarded as "cheap plastic junk" I wonder if it is worth is to read your article.
VivekGowri - Wednesday, May 25, 2011 - link
Doesn't the Archos 7 Home Tablet have a 800x480 resistive touchscreen? That says it all.I didn't mention Archos at all in this article, as far as I recall, but really, put the Nook Color next to the Archos or any one of the random tablets I mentioned in the beginning and you will see the difference. I have verifiable, tested numbers to support my claim.
As for the "cheap plastic junk" rep, I can understand the plastic part, but it's definitely not cheap feeling or junk - it's either the best designed and best built $250 tablet, or very close to it. I haven't seen anyone make that claim yet, and based on my experience (I tend to be more picky about design and build quality than some of my colleagues), it's a solid, attractive little tablet.
velis - Wednesday, May 25, 2011 - link
That wasn't the point of what madi was saying.For the purpose, the Archos provides 720p movie playback which nook doesn't.
But as you probably saw from the other replies, we'd very much like to see two things in the next budget tab comparison:
1. Get EVERYTHING out of a particular tablet: overclock the nook if it can be overclocked to see if then it can offer the feature (HD playback) it couldn't provide stock
2. Compare more tablets. Out of the three, the Archos is by far the cheapest and has its uses, even if it is only 800x480 resistive... No need to play a snob here, we're looking at *budget* tablet coparison. Also ASUS eee pad should also be in this comparison even if it is ridiculously overpowered compared to the others. As you yourself said: if's only $50 more...
On a side note: I think for anything android based one of the most important things to consider is custom ROMs. Because manufacturers tend to "forget" to update pretty soon after release. Presence of custom ROMs ensures the tablet / phone will be upgradable in the future and that allows for longer useful life of the device. You really should include this information in the review and most definitely you shouldn't post false information - as in Galaxy having no custom ROMs.
VivekGowri - Wednesday, May 25, 2011 - link
The video decode chip in the OMAP 3621 SoC doesn't support HD video decode, so the Nook Color won't be able to playback HD videos regardless of how high you overclock it. It's a hardware issue on the SoC level, that won't change.I didn't say that the Galaxy Tab had no custom ROMs or it wasn't rootable or anything - I think my wording was poor, so it came across like that. I updated it to be clearer, but what I was trying to get across was this: the Nook depends on that to survive, while custom ROMs aren't nearly as relevant to the Galaxy Tab, which comes with a usable image from the factory.
I could have looked at more tablets, theres a few out there (eLocity A7, Creative Ziio, and Archos 70) which would potentially be worth looking at, but I kind of drew the line at WSVGA screen resolution. I've used WVGA 7" tablets, and they're just not very good. I'm more interested in some of the upcoming stuff - HTC Flyer (if they drop the price to reasonable levels), the Acer Iconia A100, etc, which have the design and UX polish to compete with these two.
velis - Wednesday, May 25, 2011 - link
Don't get me wrong: I think this was a great article and I'd very much like to see more of such in the future since I'm seriously contemplating going tablet. I assume I'm not the only one :DAs for the reply:
OK, this I can dig, but in this case you should clearly state at the beginning of the article that you filtered by resolution. That doesn't excuse you from not including the Asus though :)
Also the info posted for contenders should be well balanced - reference to custom ROMs, overclocking and similar stuff here - if you delve into it for one, you should do as much for the other(s) too.
And thanks for replying :)
Ragin69er - Wednesday, May 25, 2011 - link
I appreciated this article, as an owner of a 3g Galaxy Tab I have rooted it and am running a custom gingerbread rom called Overcome which allows for up to 1.4ghz overclock. I also have a fix from a guy named chainfire which allows me to play almost every game made for tegra 2 (there are one or two games that won't play yet). Proving that the tegra 2 chipset at least to me isn't considerably more powerful than the powervr 540.Also another member at XDA forums called spacemoose is ensuring that the galaxy tab will be running Honeycomb 3.1 this very week :)
I appreciate the 7" form factor much more than the 10" form factor, I seem to be able to put my galaxy tab in a pocket no matter the weather conditions. Can't say that about nearly any other tablet.