Cyanogen team have NOOKcolors, are working on CM7

[destrekor]

Considering I just picked up a NOOKcolor a few days ago, and have it rooted and have been tweaking it, I am super excited.

I was a little bummed when digging through all the NC communities to find out there are no roms for the device, but it appears real progress is being made in certain arenas.
Koush just recently brought the Clockwork Recovery to the NC, and either through an XDA donation setup or merely because the guys were interested, a few of the Cyanogen developers have NCs and are heading straight into CyanogenMod 7 (Android 2.3, aka Gingerbread).

I so hope they are able to make this happen with a stable ROM, I :wub: CM6.1 on my Droid (would really like CM7 on the Droid, so knows when that will happen), and would love any iteration of CM to show up stable on the NOOKcolor. For the price, it's an amazing tablet if you coax all the awesomeness out from behind the veil BN developed. It's basically like a 7" Droid X without cell radios, so I really hope the development community can make this thing into what it should be.

And if they can't, I'm just as happy, I can really do everything I want to do already, just by having it rooted. Bring the performance boost of both Cyanogen development and the Android 2.3 release (who knows when BN will release the official 2.2 update, albeit completely neutered like it is at stock).

[Source]

 

[dougp]

Welcome to the team, it truly is such a wonderful device. Great to hear that the CM team is on it too.

 

[destrekor]

Welcome to the team, it truly is such a wonderful device. Great to hear that the CM team is on it too.

I'm actually a little lost.

I expected there would be few things I'd enjoy doing more on the tablet form-factor, versus using either my phone or my desktop.

Right now I'm still in the "customizing" phase, deciding which apps to install and getting things behaving and looking the way I like.

But I have a feeling, when I have the tablet nearby, my Droid is going to have less troubles keeping up due to battery life. It's likely going to be that I won't touch my phone except for phone and texting when I am in the house.

But yeah, when I bought it, it was under the intent to root it and turn it into the tablet it truly is. But I still expected it would be used as a mixture of ereader and RSS reader, with a little internet browsing.

I'm a perfectionist so I'm still using my Droid and only using the tablet when I am working on customizations. Can't wait to get this thing completely customized. It doesn't have the battery life of a true ereader, but for what I'll be using it for, it has amazing battery life.
Plus the screen is gorgeous.

Do you use it for videos at all? I read that the hardware, while awesome, doesn't have framebuffers due to a specific design decision (and likely saving a little bit of battery life), so I have a little fear of even trying the more impressive games or running high-quality video... well, are videos and the more graphics-intense games smooth, or is there a minor stutter or anything? Without framebuffers, I'm a little worried that could be the case. Then again, it might still have framebuffers and the people researching this issue got their info wrong.

 

[dougp]

I'm actually a little lost.

I expected there would be few things I'd enjoy doing more on the tablet form-factor, versus using either my phone or my desktop.

Right now I'm still in the "customizing" phase, deciding which apps to install and getting things behaving and looking the way I like.

But I have a feeling, when I have the tablet nearby, my Droid is going to have less troubles keeping up due to battery life. It's likely going to be that I won't touch my phone except for phone and texting when I am in the house.

But yeah, when I bought it, it was under the intent to root it and turn it into the tablet it truly is. But I still expected it would be used as a mixture of ereader and RSS reader, with a little internet browsing.

I'm a perfectionist so I'm still using my Droid and only using the tablet when I am working on customizations. Can't wait to get this thing completely customized. It doesn't have the battery life of a true ereader, but for what I'll be using it for, it has amazing battery life.
Plus the screen is gorgeous.

Do you use it for videos at all? I read that the hardware, while awesome, doesn't have framebuffers due to a specific design decision (and likely saving a little bit of battery life), so I have a little fear of even trying the more impressive games or running high-quality video... well, are videos and the more graphics-intense games smooth, or is there a minor stutter or anything? Without framebuffers, I'm a little worried that could be the case. Then again, it might still have framebuffers and the people researching this issue got their info wrong.

I haven't tried any videos, but I do have no problems with YouTube. I also think there's no HW video playback, and that's why people are seeing issues. I can try a game or two tonight that has better graphics, but I haven't had any issues with AngryBirds! I really don't game on it much though since I have a WP7 device.

Make sure you kill off the cell service though, it will GREATLY increase your battery life. I also setup Tasker to completely disable wifi when the screen is off. 1) Much longer battery with that and cell service disabled 2) No surprise updates! I lose maybe 5% in a 24 hr period of no use. I made it 3 days and had had maybe 4-6 hours of reading/internet use and only went down to 48%. There's some days where I read a bunch and others I don't, but I haven't noticed any issues with battery life.

 

[ibex333]

Wow! Is there something I missed? Back when Nook COLOR came out, all I heard about it is that it is just a crappy attempt at making a budget iPad, that irritates the eyes because it is an LCD screen, no exciting features, just used for reading books and magazines in color.

Now all of a sudden I see this thread... Is there another thread talking about all this rooting stuff and new features for the Nook?

Also, what is so special about that Cyanogen mod? Just the fact that it makes an Android device work faster?

Thanks.

EDIT: Well, I went to YouTube, and I think I'm already sold.. Apparently you can read PDFs in LANDSCAPE MODE!!! Finally! Not only that but you can zoom in and out and move the page across the scree to view the ENTIRE image without it being cut off or half of it transferred on the next page unlike the regular Nook or Kindle.
This feature is extremely important for me because I ONLY read PDFs, and mostly technical computer books on web design, programming, networking, etc... That alone is already enough to persuade me to buy this thing, but I wan to hear waht is the PDF experience like for those that own the NookCOLOR already.

 

[Binky]

CM on the NC would be great. As of now, the NC is still running with all of the B&N features, so i'm sure it's slowing the device down a bit.

The screen is very good. It must be ipad groupies spreading rumors.

I wouldn't call the NC a "Driod X without radios," since I also have a Droid X and the X is significantly faster. The NC is great for the price, but its just not as snappy as a top end (~1ghz) cell phone without the B&N rom overhead.

For $250, its pretty much the best damned phone/tablet bargain around.

 

[destrekor]

CM on the NC would be great. As of now, the NC is still running with all of the B&N features, so i'm sure it's slowing the device down a bit.

The screen is very good. It must be ipad groupies spreading rumors.

I wouldn't call the NC a "Driod X without radios," since I also have a Droid X and the X is significantly faster. The NC is great for the price, but its just not as snappy as a top end (~1ghz) cell phone without the B&N rom overhead.

For $250, its pretty much the best damned phone/tablet bargain around.

Keep in mind you're Droid X is 1ghz on the exact same CPU, versus the 800mhz stock for the NC. There are chips that would destroy the Droid X even at the NC speeds, it's not all about clockspeed. Hummingbird is faster than Cortex A8 (which is what these TI OMAP SoC's use).

But that's beside the point - the major reason your Droid X is faster than the NC is not because of 200mhz difference - it's the difference between Android 2.2 (Froyo) and 2.1 (Eclair). With proper implementation of Android 2.2, with the official JIT Java compiler (this is very important!) built into the official code for 2.2 stock... it makes a world of difference.

Look at benchmark charts that show the difference Froyo v. Eclair makes on the same device. It's fairly insane.

 

[Bateluer]

Hummingbird is faster than Cortex A8 (which is what these TI OMAP SoC's use).

AFAIK, Hummingbird and the OMAP 3xx0 chips both use the Cortex A8 architecture. Same with Qualcomms Snapdragons.

 

[Binky]

They share similar arcitecture but I'm not sure that anybody has really confirmed the exact cpu/gpu internals.

Adding in (as you mentioned) the differences between Android 2.1 and 2.2, AND the stock rom in the NC, it's slower and it's pushing a higher res screen. I'm sure it would be much snappier with 2.2 on a pure rom with no B&N overhead.

I still love the thing. It's just not without some stutter. I'm currently running the OC kernel at 900mhz with no issues.

 

[destrekor]

Heh, whoops. It kind of slipped my mind that Hummingbird was still Cortex A8. I just looked up both the Snapdragon and Hummingbird SoCs to remind myself of the differences, and while I knew Snapdragon used the Cortex A8 CPU, I wasn't aware it used an AMD mobile GPU (Adreno 200 series). Hummingbird, on the other hand, does use the same PowerVR SGX GPU series as the TI OMAP 3, but all the Hummingbird builds use the SGX 540.
Every single OMAP 3 build uses the SGX 530, but that isn't necessarily a bad thing.

I think the GPU differences, which I remember them being more powerful, is why I kept thinking those other SoCs were far superior to the OMAP 3.

That being said, with the NC, we are still working with an 800mhz (stock) CortexA8, and a PowerVR SGX530. Yes, it has a few more pixels to drive than most phones that use a similar SoC, but it has a lot of potential. But yes, the device needs more than root access to open it up - it really needs a full-fledged Froyo or Gingerbread ROM. Here's to hoping it's not too far away.

 

[ibex333]

Can someone please answer my question above about PDFs?

 

[Puddle Jumper]

AFAIK, Hummingbird and the OMAP 3xx0 chips both use the Cortex A8 architecture. Same with Qualcomms Snapdragons.

Snapdragon uses the ARMv7 instruction set like Cortex A8 but it actually has a custom cpu core designed in house by Qualcomm known as Scorpion. That's likely why 65nm Scorpion processors were clocked at 1ghz while we didn't see that from Cortex A8 until it was shrunk to 45nm. Scorpion also has much better floating point performance than Cortex A8.

Hummingbird uses a modified Cortex A8 core co developed with Apple (it's the same core as the A4) that's faster than a stock Cortex A8.

 

[Bateluer]

Can someone please answer my question above about PDFs?

Looks like you've edited your post with your answer.

AFAIK, you can read PDFs on the regular nooks just fine as well. Without color, anyway.

 

[ibex333]

Looks like you've edited your post with your answer.

AFAIK, you can read PDFs on the regular nooks just fine as well. Without color, anyway.

No not really. If you read it carefully, you will see that i nthe end of my edit I asked a question.

And no, regular nooks are NOT fine for reading PDFs, at least not ones that have any sort of pictures, schematics or graphics/charts in them. Any computer book I try reading is torn between pages such that it becomes very unpleasant and more often difficult to read.

Also, a regular nook does not have an accelerometer, and can not display pages in landscape view. Th nook color's ability to do so makes a world of difference according to reviews, but what I wanted to know is if this is actually the case in reality.

 

[Binky]

If you provide a link to a problematic PDF, I'll take a look at it on the NC and let you know if it reads correctly. I currently have the stock NC PDF viewer and Quickoffice. I've used both and I haven't seen any obvious problems with any PDF.

I can confirm that the NC does switch to landscape when you turn the device on its side while viewing a PDF. I think this works in both PDF viewers that I currently have installed.