Nook Color
Encyclopedia
The Nook Color is a color version of the Nook
e-reader
device by Barnes & Noble
. It is a 7-inch tablet with full-color multitouch touchscreen input. The device is designed for full-color viewing of books, newspapers, magazines, and children's picture books. A limited number of the children's books available for the Nook Color include interactive animations and the option to have a professional voice actor read the story. It was announced on 26 October 2010 and shipped on 16 November 2010.
from fuseproject
, NOOKcolor is elegantly simple in classic graphite features an angled lower corner that evokes a turned page, along with a beaded border and a soft-touch back that makes holding NOOKcolor comfortable.
touchscreen LCD display, as opposed to the original Nook's 3.5-inch secondary touchscreen. It does not feature an e-ink
display, making it a tablet computer
as well as an e-reader. It has a customizable display with color options, six font sizes, and internet browsing over Wi-Fi
, as well as a built-in media player
that supports audio and video. The Nook Color allows for the installation of applications approved by Barnes and Noble, with the company planning to provide tools for third-party software developers and an app store. Applications pre-loaded on the Nook Color include Chess, Sudoku
, crossword puzzle
s, Pandora Radio, and a media gallery for viewing pictures and video.
As with the previous Nook, the Nook Color provides a "LendMe" feature allowing users to share some books with other people depending upon licensing by the book's publisher. The purchaser is permitted to share a book once with one other user for up to two weeks. The other users may view the borrowed book using a Nook, Nook Color, or Barnes & Noble's free reader software on an iPhone
, iPod Touch
, iPad
, BlackBerry
, or any other device running Windows, Mac OS X
, or Android.
The Nook Color uses a Texas Instruments
ARM Cortex-A8
processor running at 800 MHz. The device has 8 GB of internal memory supplied by Sandisk, but only 5GB is user-accessible and can store an estimated 6,000 books or 100 hours of audio. As with the original Nook, microSD and microSDHC memory cards can be inserted to expand the Nook Color's memory up to 32 GB. Unlike the previous Nook, the Nook Color's rechargeable battery is not user-replaceable and is expected to last for 8 hours of continuous use with the wireless turned off. The device includes a built-in speaker and a universal 3.5 mm stereo headphone jack. Supported file formats include EPUB
(DRM
and non-DRM), PDF, Microsoft Office formats (DOC
, DOCX, XLS
, PPT
, etc.), TXT
, JPEG
, GIF
, PNG, BMP, MP3
, AAC
, and MP4.
A firmware update released 25 April 2011 added an app store, email client, Flash
support within the web browser, social networking tools, video and audio embedded within books, and performance improvements.
It also has been discovered that the device has hidden Bluetooth connectivity capabilities within its wireless chipset, only available after rooting, and/or flashing your device to the CyanogenMod 7 version of android for this device.
declaring "Nook Color makes a perfectly amiable reading companion if you want to see your books in full color", while Engadget
says "if you're a hardcore reader with an appetite that extends beyond books to magazines and newspapers, the Color is the first viable option we've seen that can support your habit".
In late March 2011, it was reported that the Nook Color had sold close to 3 million units since its launch.
One common method that unlocks this functionality is rooting
, which grants users root access to the Nook Color's file system. Doing so voids the device's warranty, though it can often be reverted to (non-rooted) factory defaults for warranty claims.
The second approach to unlocking full Android tablet capabilities is by booting
a developer's custom version of Android 2.2 (Froyo) from a microSD card. This method does not require rooting. The Android 3.0 (Honeycomb) SDK has also been ported to the device, but because Google has not released the complete Honeycomb source code, the port is fairly incomplete. It is rumored that Ice Cream Sandwich, the next release of AndroidOS, will be ported to the Nook Color.
See also Nook Tablet
Because of this, the USB cable included with the Nook Color is physically incompatible with other devices employing standard micro-usb connectors. However, the Nook Color itself is physically compatible with standard micro-usb cords and will still charge at a slower rate on such cords.
Barnes & Noble Nook
The Barnes & Noble Nook is a brand of electronic-book reader developed by American book retailer Barnes & Noble, based on the Android platform. The original device was announced in the United States in October 2009, and was released the next month...
e-reader
E-book
An electronic book is a book-length publication in digital form, consisting of text, images, or both, and produced on, published through, and readable on computers or other electronic devices. Sometimes the equivalent of a conventional printed book, e-books can also be born digital...
device by Barnes & Noble
Barnes & Noble
Barnes & Noble, Inc. is the largest book retailer in the United States, operating mainly through its Barnes & Noble Booksellers chain of bookstores headquartered at 122 Fifth Avenue in the Flatiron District in Manhattan in New York City. Barnes & Noble also operated the chain of small B. Dalton...
. It is a 7-inch tablet with full-color multitouch touchscreen input. The device is designed for full-color viewing of books, newspapers, magazines, and children's picture books. A limited number of the children's books available for the Nook Color include interactive animations and the option to have a professional voice actor read the story. It was announced on 26 October 2010 and shipped on 16 November 2010.
Design
Designed by Yves BeharYves Behar
Yves Béhar is a designer, entrepreneur, and sustainability advocate. He is the founder of fuseproject, the San Francisco and New York based design and branding firm he established in 1999...
from fuseproject
Fuseproject
Founded in 1999 by Yves Béhar, Fuseproject is a San Francisco-based industrial design and branding firm. It works across a wide array of industries including beauty and fashion, furniture and technology....
, NOOKcolor is elegantly simple in classic graphite features an angled lower corner that evokes a turned page, along with a beaded border and a soft-touch back that makes holding NOOKcolor comfortable.
Features
The Nook Color has a 7-inch 1024x600 resolution multi-touchMulti-touch
In computing, multi-touch refers to a touch sensing surface's ability to recognize the presence of two or more points of contact with the surface...
touchscreen LCD display, as opposed to the original Nook's 3.5-inch secondary touchscreen. It does not feature an e-ink
Electronic paper
Electronic paper, e-paper and electronic ink are a range of display technology which are designed to mimic the appearance of ordinary ink on paper. Unlike conventional backlit flat panel displays, electronic paper displays reflect light like ordinary paper...
display, making it a tablet computer
Tablet computer
A tablet computer, or simply tablet, is a complete mobile computer, larger than a mobile phone or personal digital assistant, integrated into a flat touch screen and primarily operated by touching the screen...
as well as an e-reader. It has a customizable display with color options, six font sizes, and internet browsing over Wi-Fi
Wi-Fi
Wi-Fi or Wifi, is a mechanism for wirelessly connecting electronic devices. A device enabled with Wi-Fi, such as a personal computer, video game console, smartphone, or digital audio player, can connect to the Internet via a wireless network access point. An access point has a range of about 20...
, as well as a built-in media player
Media player
Media player is a term typically used to describe computer software for playing back multimedia files. While many media players can play both audio and video, others focus only on one media type or the other...
that supports audio and video. The Nook Color allows for the installation of applications approved by Barnes and Noble, with the company planning to provide tools for third-party software developers and an app store. Applications pre-loaded on the Nook Color include Chess, Sudoku
Sudoku
is a logic-based, combinatorial number-placement puzzle. The objective is to fill a 9×9 grid with digits so that each column, each row, and each of the nine 3×3 sub-grids that compose the grid contains all of the digits from 1 to 9...
, crossword puzzle
Crossword Puzzle
For the common puzzle, see CrosswordCrossword Puzzle was the second to last album made by The Partridge Family and was not one of the most popular albums. It was released in 1973 and did not produce a U.S. single. This album was finally released on CD in 2003 on Arista's BMG Heritage label...
s, Pandora Radio, and a media gallery for viewing pictures and video.
As with the previous Nook, the Nook Color provides a "LendMe" feature allowing users to share some books with other people depending upon licensing by the book's publisher. The purchaser is permitted to share a book once with one other user for up to two weeks. The other users may view the borrowed book using a Nook, Nook Color, or Barnes & Noble's free reader software on an iPhone
IPhone
The iPhone is a line of Internet and multimedia-enabled smartphones marketed by Apple Inc. The first iPhone was unveiled by Steve Jobs, then CEO of Apple, on January 9, 2007, and released on June 29, 2007...
, iPod Touch
IPod Touch
The iPod Touch is a portable media player, personal digital assistant, handheld game console, and Wi-Fi mobile device designed and marketed by Apple Inc. The iPod Touch adds the multi-touch graphical user interface to the iPod line...
, iPad
IPad
The iPad is a line of tablet computers designed, developed and marketed by Apple Inc., primarily as a platform for audio-visual media including books, periodicals, movies, music, games, and web content. The iPad was introduced on January 27, 2010 by Apple's then-CEO Steve Jobs. Its size and...
, BlackBerry
BlackBerry
BlackBerry is a line of mobile email and smartphone devices developed and designed by Canadian company Research In Motion since 1999.BlackBerry devices are smartphones, designed to function as personal digital assistants, portable media players, internet browsers, gaming devices, and much more...
, or any other device running Windows, Mac OS X
Mac OS X
Mac OS X is a series of Unix-based operating systems and graphical user interfaces developed, marketed, and sold by Apple Inc. Since 2002, has been included with all new Macintosh computer systems...
, or Android.
The Nook Color uses a Texas Instruments
Texas Instruments
Texas Instruments Inc. , widely known as TI, is an American company based in Dallas, Texas, United States, which develops and commercializes semiconductor and computer technology...
ARM Cortex-A8
ARM Cortex-A8
The ARM Cortex-A8 is a processor core designed by ARM Holdings implementing the ARM v7 instruction set architecture. Compared to the ARM11 core, the Cortex-A8 is dual-issue superscalar, achieving roughly twice the instructions executed per clock cycle....
processor running at 800 MHz. The device has 8 GB of internal memory supplied by Sandisk, but only 5GB is user-accessible and can store an estimated 6,000 books or 100 hours of audio. As with the original Nook, microSD and microSDHC memory cards can be inserted to expand the Nook Color's memory up to 32 GB. Unlike the previous Nook, the Nook Color's rechargeable battery is not user-replaceable and is expected to last for 8 hours of continuous use with the wireless turned off. The device includes a built-in speaker and a universal 3.5 mm stereo headphone jack. Supported file formats include EPUB
EPUB
EPUB is a free and open e-book standard by the International Digital Publishing Forum...
(DRM
Digital rights management
Digital rights management is a class of access control technologies that are used by hardware manufacturers, publishers, copyright holders and individuals with the intent to limit the use of digital content and devices after sale. DRM is any technology that inhibits uses of digital content that...
and non-DRM), PDF, Microsoft Office formats (DOC
DOC (computing)
In computing, DOC or doc is a filename extension for word processing documents; most commonly for Microsoft Word. Historically, the extension was used for documentation in plain-text format, particularly of programs or computer hardware, on a wide range of operating systems...
, DOCX, XLS
Microsoft Excel
Microsoft Excel is a proprietary commercial spreadsheet application written and distributed by Microsoft for Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X. It features calculation, graphing tools, pivot tables, and a macro programming language called Visual Basic for Applications...
, PPT
Microsoft PowerPoint
Microsoft PowerPoint, usually just called PowerPoint, is a non-free commercial presentation program developed by Microsoft. It is part of the Microsoft Office suite, and runs on Microsoft Windows and Apple's Mac OS X operating system...
, etc.), TXT
Text file
A text file is a kind of computer file that is structured as a sequence of lines of electronic text. A text file exists within a computer file system...
, JPEG
JPEG
In computing, JPEG . The degree of compression can be adjusted, allowing a selectable tradeoff between storage size and image quality. JPEG typically achieves 10:1 compression with little perceptible loss in image quality....
, GIF
GIF
The Graphics Interchange Format is a bitmap image format that was introduced by CompuServe in 1987 and has since come into widespread usage on the World Wide Web due to its wide support and portability....
, PNG, BMP, MP3
MP3
MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III, more commonly referred to as MP3, is a patented digital audio encoding format using a form of lossy data compression...
, AAC
Advanced Audio Coding
Advanced Audio Coding is a standardized, lossy compression and encoding scheme for digital audio. Designed to be the successor of the MP3 format, AAC generally achieves better sound quality than MP3 at similar bit rates....
, and MP4.
A firmware update released 25 April 2011 added an app store, email client, Flash
Adobe Flash
Adobe Flash is a multimedia platform used to add animation, video, and interactivity to web pages. Flash is frequently used for advertisements, games and flash animations for broadcast...
support within the web browser, social networking tools, video and audio embedded within books, and performance improvements.
It also has been discovered that the device has hidden Bluetooth connectivity capabilities within its wireless chipset, only available after rooting, and/or flashing your device to the CyanogenMod 7 version of android for this device.
Reception
Since launch, Nook Color received generally positive reviews with PC MagazinePC Magazine
PC Magazine is a computer magazine published by Ziff Davis Publishing Holdings Inc. A print edition was published from 1982 to January 2009...
declaring "Nook Color makes a perfectly amiable reading companion if you want to see your books in full color", while Engadget
Engadget
Engadget is a multilingual technology blog network with daily coverage of gadgets and consumer electronics. Though on appearance Engadget functions much like a blog and may be defined as such, much of its editorial content takes the form of an online magazine...
says "if you're a hardcore reader with an appetite that extends beyond books to magazines and newspapers, the Color is the first viable option we've seen that can support your habit".
In late March 2011, it was reported that the Nook Color had sold close to 3 million units since its launch.
Use as an Android tablet
As an Android device, the Nook Color can be modified to run most Android applications.One common method that unlocks this functionality is rooting
Rooting (Android OS)
Rooting is a process that allows users of mobile phones and other devices running the Android operating system to attain privileged control within Android's Linux subsystem with the goal of overcoming limitations that carriers and manufacturers put on some devices...
, which grants users root access to the Nook Color's file system. Doing so voids the device's warranty, though it can often be reverted to (non-rooted) factory defaults for warranty claims.
The second approach to unlocking full Android tablet capabilities is by booting
Booting
In computing, booting is a process that begins when a user turns on a computer system and prepares the computer to perform its normal operations. On modern computers, this typically involves loading and starting an operating system. The boot sequence is the initial set of operations that the...
a developer's custom version of Android 2.2 (Froyo) from a microSD card. This method does not require rooting. The Android 3.0 (Honeycomb) SDK has also been ported to the device, but because Google has not released the complete Honeycomb source code, the port is fairly incomplete. It is rumored that Ice Cream Sandwich, the next release of AndroidOS, will be ported to the Nook Color.
See also Nook Tablet
Nook Tablet
The Nook Tablet is a tablet computer sold by Barnes & Noble. It was announced on November 7, 2011, and became available on November 17 for US$249. The device is meant to replace the Nook Color...
USB port
The original Nook utilized a standard Micro USB connection for both battery charging and PC connectivity. The Nook Color uses a modified connector with two depths. The first depth is compatible with Micro USB (5-conductor), while the second depth has 12 conductors. This change was made to increase the amount of power available to charge the larger battery of the Nook Color when using the included cable at 1.9 amps as opposed to the 0.5 amp limit of standard USB connections.Because of this, the USB cable included with the Nook Color is physically incompatible with other devices employing standard micro-usb connectors. However, the Nook Color itself is physically compatible with standard micro-usb cords and will still charge at a slower rate on such cords.