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
MonkeyPaw - Wednesday, May 25, 2011 - link
Sorry for the typo, it is early for me. :oLukemcd - Thursday, May 26, 2011 - link
It's off in size. That's the primary reason they did not make a direct comparison. It really is an apples-oranges thing, too, since two-handed typing is perfect with a vertical Nook but really isn't once you get much beyond that.jconan - Saturday, May 28, 2011 - link
Dido, got the Transformer from Fry's even though amazon sells it for 443. It is quite worth it with splashtop pc access and portability even though it is a bit more for the portability. It does pale to iPad in terms of quality apps but for the freedom from iTunes it's liveable.ViperV990 - Wednesday, May 25, 2011 - link
Is it feasible for a regular joe to put Honeycomb on either tablets?Also, is either of them capable of acting as a Google Voice/Talk client?
zvadim - Wednesday, May 25, 2011 - link
Nook doesn't have a microphone, so unless you try for some kind of Bluetooth headset solution....ForeverStudent - Wednesday, May 25, 2011 - link
I realize this is kind of irrelevant to the article, and I apologize, but are the dimensions of the devices on the first page switched? They seem to show that the nook is significantly smaller than the Tab, about 30% shorter and narrower. But then throughout the article you talk about how much more compact the Tab is. I could be confused, I'm just checking.VivekGowri - Wednesday, May 25, 2011 - link
Ah crap, I think those are the dimensions for the EVO 4G...Fixing that now :) Thanks for catching that.cosmotic - Wednesday, May 25, 2011 - link
Just as this was published Woot.com has the Refurbished Samsung Galaxy Tab 7" 16GB Android Tablet - Wi-Fi + 3G for $259.VivekGowri - Wednesday, May 25, 2011 - link
That, my friend, is a good buy. Not sure if I like the idea of a refurb, but if you're dead set on a Galaxy Tab, that'd be tough to pass up.phendric - Wednesday, May 25, 2011 - link
Ditto to that. This isn't the wi-fi only version of the Galaxy Tab, but the full 3G version (with the Hummingbird SoC, and other better hardware). I'll only add that it runs on Sprint's network.I wonder if activation of a data plan is required? Anyone know?
I signed up to two different websites just now - Woot, to order the Tab, and Anandtech, to leave this comment. I've been a silent reader of the site for several years now, but just as I was wondering why there wasn't a good review comparison between the two tablets on a high-traffic site, this showed up.
Great site, good writing, active community.