Nook Touch rooted

The new NOOK touchscreen eBook reader has a 6 inch E Ink display and a battery that can run for months at a time. But there’s one other really cool think about the $139 NOOK Touch: It runs Android 2.1.

Just days after the eReader started shipping, YouTube user JFreke rooted the device and started installing third party apps. It turns out that Angry Birds is barely playable. That’s not surprising, since the E Ink display has a fairly slow screen refresh rate (at least by LCD or OLED standards). But you can play the game, which is pretty impressive.

This opens the door to using the NOOK Touch to surf the web over WiFi or run other apps that don’t need to run at 30 frames per second. But the main reason I think this is big news? You should be able to run third party eBook apps on a rooted NOOK Touch.

In other words, you’re not locked into the Barnes & Noble eBook store with this device. You can install the Amazon Kindle app for Android, the Kobo app, or a standalone eReader such as Aldiko.

You can check out the awkward Angry Birds video after the break.

via Mike Cane

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9 replies on “NOOK Touch rooted, runs Android apps”

  1. We all know that this one is useless. But I must admit that
    I was impressed the first time I saw this video. It’s like a blueprint of an
    Angry Birds concept from way, way back, but actually it was the other way
    around.

  2. Browser actually is available, just hidden. Type a URL into the search screen and it pulls up a web browser.

  3. “urn other apps that don’t need” typo there.
    Thats rather cool and yeah, I agree, trying to browse web would have been much better choice to make video about. Impressive nonetheless.

    1. I can’t get multi-touch to do anything, doesn’t seem to be enabled.

  4. Wah, wah, wah….

    Why, out of any video he could have posted of an app running on a rooted Nook Simple Touch Reader, would he have posted that one?  This device isn’t made for games.  Maybe running e-mail or a web browser may have inspired more “Oooooh”‘s rather than “Awwwww”‘s.  

    1. Yeah, that seems to be first app tried on any newly rooted device. I care much more about a browser.

      1. I completely agree. Apparently, there is a built-in browser on the Nook, though. Use your search feature and type in the web address and voila! However, the UI is not built to accommodate web-browsing, so it’s very hard to navigate.

Comments are closed.