Rooting the Nook Simple Touch

I snagged a Nook Simple Touch for £29 and I've already given my thoughts on it. I was very impressed by the user friendliness of the software but less than impressed by the limitations in it. In particular I thought the library view was badly designed for large collections of books. I also thought the PDF reader was very poor since I could not zoom into a page rendering it mostly useless.

Fortunately the device is running Android 2.1 underneath so with the aid of rooting the Nook can be made to do a lot more than it does out of the box.

What does rooting mean? It means unlocking the device from its factory settings and installing a new launcher on the device. It also allows the device to install some apps from the Android marketplace, in particular different e-reading apps, PDF viewers and so on.

And don't worry. The original Nook reader software still works after rooting. I have also successfully used Adobe Digital editions protected content on the device after rooting.

The standard disclaimer applies though. These instructions worked for me but I provide no guarantees that they will work for you. If you are in any doubt, then do not proceed.

What you need to root:

1. Nook Simple Touch, fully charged. My Nook was running 1.2.1 of the firmware which is the latest.
2. Windows 7
3. MicroSD card, in my case 8GB with a SD adapter so I could plug it into my PC.
4. NookManager
5. Win32 Disk Imager
6. NGTAppsAttack for the Android Market & GMail apps
7. A GMail address

The steps to root the Nook were simple:

1. Download the NookManager image to a PC
2. Use Win32 Disk Imager to flash it to the MicroSD card
3. Install NGTAppsAttack as per instructions to MicroSD card
4. Insert MicroSD into Nook
5. Reboot Nook
6. Back up existing Nook firmware from the menu
7. Install root from the menu
8. Reboot
9. Install NGTAppsAttack from Custom Install
10. Reboot
11. Follow through the Google Market registration steps

NookManager is a tool that can backup and root your device with a few clicks. It's very easy to use - your Nook boots straight into the Menu and from there you can root. To use the market you have to install NGTAppsAttack.

The only downside of this process is that Android 2.1 is pretty ancient and the Google apps are slightly broken. For example the search function in Android Market does not work. The workaround is to log onto the Android Market from a PC and use the PC to initiate the installation to the device. The device shows up as "phone" for me. Some sites suggest installing an app called SearchMarket which does the same but I didn't feel the need to do this.

After rebooting some things become apparent. First, the standard Nook library is no longer the standard home launcher. Instead you have a launcher which looks a bit like a file explorer. This shows your books arranged by folders. It's more compact so it's an immediate improvement. You also have a button at the bottom which leads to an Apps screen where you can run any apps you have installed. If you prefer you can configure the launcher to show the apps first instead of the books or vice versa. There is also a handy app which lets you re-program the page turning buttons on either side of the screen as Android actions. I programmed the left side buttons as Back and Menu respectively. There are soft buttons for these functions in the title bar but some apps want to be full screen so it's best to set some buttons.

So now you have a rooted Nook, what should you do with it? Consider installing:

• CoolReader (a free e-reader)
• Kindle for Amazon books
• Opera Mini or Opera (a web browser)
• EBookDroid (a free e-reader with PDF and Comic support)
• Calculator (choose from the millions on offer!)
• DropBox for easy file transfer

So now you have a device which can read multiple book formats, including Kindle, PDF and comics, and can read email, act as a calculator or any other simple task. Obviously the Nook will never be much use for playing Angry Birds or anything like that, but it can be a lot more than it is out of the box.

And if you haven't done so, install Calibre on a PC to manage your collection of books and to transfer books back and forth with the device. There is even a de-DRM plugin for Calibre which will strip out DRM which makes it a lot easier to transfer your collection between devices without messing around with third party software.