[Nook Color Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] poofyhairguy:
This is a public service announcement for those who want to use Honeycomb on the Nook Color:

Honeycomb on the Nook Color is basically a tech demo!!!

Yes, it is cool that the Nook Color runs Honeycomb, and the fact that it does is due to the great work of many developers who have stretched the limits of our ereader. With that said, Honeycomb on the Nook Color is not- and will not be- equivalent to the other ROM options. If you are trying to do something on Nook Honeycomb and it doesn't work, there are probably very good reasons for that.

Development on Honeycomb has run into many problems:

1. (by far biggest problem) Honeycomb's source is not released, unlike other versions of Android. This means developers cannot customize Honeycomb for Nook Color like what has been done with CM7 (which is the Gingerbread version of Android). Our Honeycomb is a binary SDK version hacked to work on our device.

2. Much of Honeycomb and its applications are optimized for the Tegra platform. Even if you don't know what that is, just know its something that all on-the-market Honeycomb tablets have that the Nook Color doesn't have.

Now for the big question:

But isn't Honeycomb Android's tablet version, so doesn't that mean I don't have a real tablet without Honeycomb?

I see many people fall into the trap that Honeycomb=Tablet and everything else Android=Phone. This could not be more untrue. Samsung released its Galaxy Tab without Honeycomb last year to high reviews, and HTC has just released a brand new tablet without Honeycomb.

The great developers in this community have modified the phone version of Android so significantly that it gives a great tablet experience. The CM7 developers (fattire, verygreen, dalingrin, nemith) have taken the Gingerbread source and have made the Nook Color's hardware work perfectly with that version of Android. In fact they have gone above and beyond and made it so hardware that Barnes and Nobles never intended to work (internal bluetooth, USB support, etc.) now works. Finally a developer named Mad-Murdock has modified Gingerbread itself so that it has many of the tablet features that Honeycomb has.

At this point, you may be wondering, what CAN I do without Honeycomb? The answer is quite a few things:

1. Honeycomb lacks Netflix support, our Nook Colors running CM7 can play Netflix.

2. Honeycomb games (aka Tegra games) can be run after installing the Chainfire 3D program from the market.

3. A CM7 Nook Color can be hacked to view Hulu, Honeycomb devices lack this ability currently.

4. A CM7 Nook Color has bluetooth and USB support that the Honeycomb ROM probably will never get.

5. A CM7 Nook Color has full support of its video playback capabilities which means programs like Slingplayer work, as do certain videos you encode for the Nook Color using Handbrake.

But poofyhairguy, I have convinced myself despite the above list that a tablet without Honeycomb isn't a tablet so I don't even want a Nook Color without Honeycomb!!!

If that is the case for you, then I suggest you sell your Nook Color and purchase a real Honeycomb device such as a Transformer or Xoom. Google has made it clear that it won't release the Honeycomb source before its next big version which is due this winter. That basically means that the Nook Color won't run a "real" tablet OS with full capabilities till the end of this year or the beginning of the next.

If that is unacceptable to you, time to move on. If getting all those non-Honeycomb benefits sounds great to you, then welcome to the party. In many ways the Nook Color is the best tablet on the market, you just have to think outside the box a little to get full enjoyment out of the device.

Have a nice day!