Nook Color impressions

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ADB will not connect via USB.

No ports open on the device, so no connecting ADB over IP (I have seen this work on the Maylong M-150 (Walgreens) tablet.)

Browser sends HTTP User-Agent:
Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10_5_7;en-us) AppleWebKit/530.17 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Safari/530.17

I have tested the factory reset button combination, it is valid. Hold Volume+ and Nook and Power, while the device is turned off.

WiFi options are rudimentary. There is no support for proxy in network settings, additionally, after receiving an IP address from DHCP, the device appears to connect to a website to verify connectivity. If you have a captive portal network setup (where HTTP outgoing requests are redirected to a login page), then the verification process will just hang. You will be unable to go anywhere using the included browser. After several minutes, the verification process will fail, and then you may be able to connect to the captive portal using the web browser. This is discussed on page 56 of the Nook Color user guide.

Would it be helpful to anyone to include the open source libraries that the device includes (under Legal Notices). I don't know if it is helpful to know what libraries are included (or omitted) compared to a conventional Android device?

Additionally, some notes on the MicroUSB connector. It is proprietary.

* It will sync, but not charge, when connected to my PC desktop's USB (wattage unknown.)
* An ordinary MicroUSB will sync, but not charge, when connected to PC.
* I left the included 120VAC-to-USB transformer at the office, so I do not know the listed wattage.
* The nook cable will charge the device when connected to my Moto Droid1 120VAC-to-USB.
* An ordinary MicroUSB will not charge the device when connect to the Moto Droid1 120VAC-to-USB transformer.
* Finally, the Nook cable will not fit in my Moto Droid1. Therefore it will not charge or sync. Careful examination of the Nook cable shows that the metal trapezoid connector is slightly longer, and appears to have additional pins. 12, in addition to the 5 conventional pins. I cannot tell by observation whether the receptacle within the nook makes contact with these pins.

Originally Posted by phiz

Additionally, some notes on the MicroUSB connector. It is proprietary.

* It will sync, but not charge, when connected to my PC desktop's USB (wattage unknown.)
* An ordinary MicroUSB will sync, but not charge, when connected to PC.
* I left the included 120VAC-to-USB transformer at the office, so I do not know the listed wattage.
* The nook cable will charge the device when connected to my Moto Droid1 120VAC-to-USB.
* An ordinary MicroUSB will not charge the device when connect to the Moto Droid1 120VAC-to-USB transformer.
* Finally, the Nook cable will not fit in my Moto Droid1. Therefore it will not charge or sync. Careful examination of the Nook cable shows that the metal trapezoid connector is slightly longer, and appears to have additional pins. 12, in addition to the 5 conventional pins. I cannot tell by observation whether the receptacle within the nook makes contact with these pins.

* Mine is charging off my Dell monitor using the Nook USB cable.
* Charger is 5V - 1.9A.

I've read everywhere that the USB cable can't charge over the PC. It even says it in the manual, but it charges just fine connected to my computer. It takes forever though and the light never turns solid green. But the battery percentage still increases to 100%.

Motherboard is a Gigabyte EP45-UD3P if anyone's curious.

The micro usb has two extra pins so that it will quickcharge using the ac adapter. If connected to a computer and the screen is on it does not pull enough to charge the device but with screen off it will. One of the techs said that on the b&n forums.

So as far as rooting this thing, it seems apparent that there are three attack vectors.

* If device checks MicroSD on bootup for updates.
* Userland exploit, loading a file, going to a URL, Wifi Protocol stuff etc. Perhaps in the PDF libraries? (Note, because of sand-boxing this may not lead directly to full root, but it may allowing running of other software that would be useful for reconnaissance on the device.)
* Wait for Nook SDK to come out, and use the increased access to the device to compromise it.

The device is frustrating to use as is. Not because of any major design flaws, but because of the untapped potential. Like, I would love to have DropBox to ease file management. And the browser is left wanting (it reports as Mac OSX, and does not render some pages well (Google reader is wholly unusable.)

I'm considering returning it. It has so much potential, but I'm expecting the quality of the Chinese knockoff android tablets to continue to improve.

charges perfectly fine off my 10 watt panasonic wall adapter with an oem micro usb. says it's not charging but it went from 93 to 100 in ~10 minutes while i was using it.

there was a good bit of stutter when registering my device. i had to tap multiple times to switch b/t numbers and letter input. sometimes i had to tap the character multiple times for it to register.

i agree though, this is the sweetest tablet next to the galaxy tab and iphone hardware wise. too bad it's locked down right now.

just like all the cheap-o android tabs, this one does have soft back and menu buttons. if you click the book icon at the bottom the back and menu buttons are there. the home, volumes, and power buttons are the only physical buttons. no search button, but i rarely use in on any of my other android devices.

video playback is horrid! all my mp4 will play but choppy. even streaming was crappy. i tried youtube mobile with no videos being able to be played. madthumbs (nsfw!) worked but so stuttery it made it unfappable.

NM reboot fixed everything. my ripped videos and stuff downloaded with videodownload helper play fine now. able to watch some kung fu treachery on the beautiful screen.

the little book icon (read it now) at the bottom doesn't seem to bring up the menu and back buttons anymore. now it just takes me to the last read book on the homepage. i'd rather have the back and menu buttons back.

The charging connector has too many pins for just charge control. I counted 12 extra pins over the 5 standard USB, but it's tiny enough that I could've skipped one. I'm sure that two are used for controlling the LED in the connector shell, one is probably used as a cable identifier, leaving 9 unknowns.

My guesses:

-OMAP boot mode (MMC boot, select pins (1-2)
-serial (2)
-JTAG (4 or 5)
-audio (2-3)

I thought that extra current capacity could account for all the rest, but why spend on what I'm guessing is not a cheap connector just to bus all those tiny pins together?

Anyway, I tried to buy a second charge/sync cable to dissect today but my local store only had cases and screen protectors in stock. The connector has all pins populated so I'm hoping I can break them out and start probing for a bootloader on serial. Hopefully iFixit will get a teardown done soon and we can get a good look at the parts.

seem like there's bug in that read it now button.

to get the menu and back buttons back you need to open a pdf on you sd card. then for some reason you get you back and menu buttons when you hit the read it now.

this is helpful in that with the menu button you can now have a forward button for web browsing, refresh and you can go back without scrolling all the way to the top.