Today Barnes and Noble pulled the curtain off their much-anticipated Nook Color firmware update, version 1.2, that upgrades the operating system to Froyo (Android 2.2) and adds a number of new features, including support for Adobe Flash and access to the new Nook Color Appstore.
The Nook Color firmware update is available for manual download and install from B&N’s support page, along with the instructions on how to apply it. Automatic updates will start being pushed to Nook Colors starting this week and over the next few weeks, as long as it is connected to a WiFi network of course.
Right now I’m testing out the new update and working on putting together a video and written review for it.
Until then, here’s the list of improvements via the updates page over at Barnes and Noble:
- Access to shop a broad collection of popular NOOK Apps™ to enjoy great games, stay up to date on news and weather, and more
- Full-featured free email to check and send web-based email (i.e., Yahoo, Gmail, Hotmail, AOL) all from one in-box
- NOOK Color’s update to Android OS 2.2/Froyo offers system improvements, browser performance and a more complete Web experience giving customers access to enjoy even more video, interactive and animated content. NOOK Color now includes support for Adobe® Flash® Player
- NOOK Kids™ exciting new Read and Play titles that bring animation, activities and stories together
- NOOK Books Enhanced offer in-page video and audio in a growing number of titles
- Enhancements to magazine navigation making it easier to enjoy even more of the growing selection of magazines in NOOK Newsstand
- NOOK Friends™ (beta) to see your friends’ reading activities, swap books with LendMe™, share recommendations and discover new titles
I wonder if this update by B&N is going it make it necessary for the root process to be altered in some way.
It usually does. I went ahead and un-rooted my Nook to put it back to factory settings before installing the update. The first update did crazy things to my rooted Nook. XDA is the place to go to keep updated on the rooting process.
I will be monitoring XDA as I am sure you will be for this blog. I am going to need to root it because there are number of apps I purchased for my previous tablet such as some Oxford dictionaries which weren’t cheap. Also I want to be able to read web pages offline in night mode using Instafetch or something similar as I was accustomed to doing.