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belden · 04-25-2011, 10:26 AM

I rooted a few months ago. It wasn't for me, so I went back to stock. I use my NC exclusively for the reading and I felt that rooted it wasn't as fast, I may have been crazy but that's my reasoning. Anyway, as soon as I saw the update was live I downloaded it directly from B&N and applied it, here are my early impressions.

-They finally added the one feature I wanted the most: sideloaded books can be added to the home screen and recently read books show up in the bar at the bottom. It's worth pointing out though that from my testing as far as I can tell this only applies to books on the main memory of the NC and not ones on the SD card. Books added from the SD card showed up on the home screen but then disappeared after a restart.

-SD card handling has been changed. Now when the card is mounted an icon shows up in the bottom left notification area all the time. Clicking on this icon takes you to the SD card file browser. The card seems to mount much faster than it did before. Books on the SD card can also be added to shelves and the NC will remember them after a power off, so that bug was fixed.

-The quick settings menu now has the date listed, the battery time remaining, and a button at the top right to take you to the main settings menu.

-Email works well. It actually looks better than the stock Android email app in my opinion. I only set it up with Gmail. As far as I can tell there is no way to adjust the settings for email. It's not push since that would probably kill battery life, I have no idea how often it refreshes.

-The app store is extremely anemic right now. There are only a handful of free apps and nothing that compelling. A calendar and note app were the only things I considered downloading. Most of the apps are children's books from Oceanhouse Media.

-I tried downloading the Amazon App Store .apk from an email. It downloads fine and when I open it I get a choice between installing it using "app installer" and "package installer". It opens to install but because the permissions can't be set to install non-Market apps, it fails.

There's nothing else jumping out at me now. I've only used the update for about an hour now. I didn't try the web browser or Flash, I'll do that later. Also, to those people asking, B&N's site says the update will be pushed out over WiFi over the next few WEEKS, so if you are waiting for it OTA it may be awhile.

04-25-2011, 10:26 AM	#14
belden Enthusiast Posts: 36 Karma: 250 Join Date: Jul 2010 Device: Kindle 2 (US)	My Impressions I rooted a few months ago. It wasn't for me, so I went back to stock. I use my NC exclusively for the reading and I felt that rooted it wasn't as fast, I may have been crazy but that's my reasoning. Anyway, as soon as I saw the update was live I downloaded it directly from B&N and applied it, here are my early impressions. -They finally added the one feature I wanted the most: sideloaded books can be added to the home screen and recently read books show up in the bar at the bottom. It's worth pointing out though that from my testing as far as I can tell this only applies to books on the main memory of the NC and not ones on the SD card. Books added from the SD card showed up on the home screen but then disappeared after a restart. -SD card handling has been changed. Now when the card is mounted an icon shows up in the bottom left notification area all the time. Clicking on this icon takes you to the SD card file browser. The card seems to mount much faster than it did before. Books on the SD card can also be added to shelves and the NC will remember them after a power off, so that bug was fixed. -The quick settings menu now has the date listed, the battery time remaining, and a button at the top right to take you to the main settings menu. -Email works well. It actually looks better than the stock Android email app in my opinion. I only set it up with Gmail. As far as I can tell there is no way to adjust the settings for email. It's not push since that would probably kill battery life, I have no idea how often it refreshes. -The app store is extremely anemic right now. There are only a handful of free apps and nothing that compelling. A calendar and note app were the only things I considered downloading. Most of the apps are children's books from Oceanhouse Media. -I tried downloading the Amazon App Store .apk from an email. It downloads fine and when I open it I get a choice between installing it using "app installer" and "package installer". It opens to install but because the permissions can't be set to install non-Market apps, it fails. There's nothing else jumping out at me now. I've only used the update for about an hour now. I didn't try the web browser or Flash, I'll do that later. Also, to those people asking, B&N's site says the update will be pushed out over WiFi over the next few WEEKS, so if you are waiting for it OTA it may be awhile.