Posted on 01/31/2011 4:02:49 PM PST by Swordmaker
$249, Barnes & Noble Nook Color, enjoying my preview of Honeycomb right now, and wow, what a game changer for Android tablets. Can't wait until the full ASOP source release is made by Google. Probably will have the sound issues ironed out before then, though.
Oh, and it's a pretty darn good e-reader too.
The Nook Color is a bit small and underpowered for a tablet, but perfect for a color e-reader. The battery life is good if you don’t use the WiFi, but then as an e-reader you don’t need the WiFi on much anyway.
... er, rumors. Darn autocorrect.
Even in retail condition, I'd disagree about being underpowered. Overclocked to 1.1ghz, it fairly flies in whatever I'm doing. Battery life, once rooted and the phone files removed from Android, is roughly 6 hours with wifi, 12 hours without. That'll likely improve in the next kernel as it takes advantage of more methods of governing the CPU.
Still not quite sure about size issues; I find the iPad to be uncomfortably heavy and too large to easily hold in one hand for any length of time, and typing without stopping to put it on something is virtually impossible for me. The Nook Color's 7" size is far easier for me to just pop out, handle e-mail, do some web browsing, and make comments on FreeRepublic.
And there's the real nut in the Android/iPhone world.. Apple has nothing preventing it from directly interacting with the end user. Most other manufacturers are tied to the carrier as the interface, and since the carrier pays for the updates, and then pays even more to have their people test and add in their crapware, the opportunity for orphan devices grows exponentially.
The closest thing in the Android world to the iOs update cycle is Cyanogen's roms. If you're lucky enough to have a phone that can be rooted, and has these roms ported to it, you're going to have a phone that can last a good long time. I'd still be on 2.1 if I was waiting on T-mobile to update my phone, whereas I've been on Gingerbread for a month now, and had wifi calling for the last week, simply because of the efforts of these secondary developers.
Now you're talking overclocking and rooting? We're not talking about a commercial Nook Color, we're talking about a geek toy. You can talk the performance of two sedans, but then someone comes in talking about how he supercharged and nitroused his lower model so it's equivalent. Cool for him, but we're talking about what people can buy.
Umm, ok, you're the one who stated 'slow'. Out of the box, there's not a lot you can do with a Nook Color, aside from ereader, going to B&N's online store, a couple games, and the web browser. At Best Buy yesterday, with the iPad and the Nook Color side by side, the Nook Color rendered web pages faster than the iPad did going to the same site. I'm unclear where this 'slow' measure has any meaning on an unrooted Nook Color.
It is slower than most of the Android phones on the market, both in CPU MHz, and for the GPU in many of them. OTOH, I'm betting B&N subsidizes the cost of a Nook Color a bit against expected store purchases. That's how you can get a fairly decent, if a bit small and slow, tablet for that price if you're willing to root it.
Nook Color rendered web pages faster than the iPad did going to the same site.
This is about browser speed. Sometimes Android's faster, sometimes Safari is. It mostly depends on the web site you visit.
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