[Nook Color General] webman2k:
Hello All,

Just thought I'd add my experience with CM on my Nook Color. I received the Nook from a friend who got an iPad mini - said he wasn't really using it anymore. I knew I wanted full Android, and one that was usable, so I got to work with trying a bunch of different solutions. What I ended up with is a very quick, responsive tablet that runs everything I need it to. I'm hoping this will help some users starting out who are looking for the best compromise between speed and functionality on this aging hardware. If you make any of these changes or suggestions I'm not responsible for damage to your hardware, software, body parts, blah blah blah. Thanks goes to various sources, but most of all to this forum and it's users for being an outstanding source of information. Again, these are all based off of MY experience with the tablet.

As far as the ROM, MiRaGe CyanogenMod 7.2. No question. I tried the official CyanogenMod, Miui, and couldn't even find phiremod (which isn't being worked on). CyanagenMod is current and has an active community with guides for help and support, and the MiRaGe variant has some pretty slick modifications that work very well on the Nook.

I find installing to the internal memory "slightly" faster, resulting in less issues. There's no reason to keep the stock OS on there for me, so I just removed it. You can find full EMMC installation instructions on this forum.

Out of the box with this install, it's pretty responsive.

Disable Wifi when the screen is off - it'll save you a bunch of battery, unless you're really concerned about notifications when you're not using it.

For applications, here's my experience:

1. Latest YouTube works well, but you'll need to deselect "HD" for each video as it loads. An inconvenience, but it works.

2. I've tried tons of versions of Netflix, and find version 1.8.1 the best for this installation. Streaming is smooth, and the UI is responsive. Once you install it, ignore the prompts from the Play store to update it.

3. Install MX Player to handle any type of video playback, including mp4s off the Internet - there's no built in support. It's fast, free and runs everything I've thrown at it.

4. Dolphin browser works really well on this installation. I find it the best balance of performance and features.

Now, the most important part, and believe it or not this made the most difference for me - disable the phone software. Since 7.2 was primarily developed for phones, the cell and phone services are still running, sucking up battery and CPU. You can see the service Cell Standby running constantly. Here's how to wipe it out.

1. Download Root Browser, free from the Market.

2. Navigate to /System/Apps

3. Delete (I know, you could freeze, rename or move, but I won't need these again, and didn't experience any issues afterwards) the following files in this order:

VoiceDialer.apk

TelephonyProvider.apk

Mms.apk

Phone.apk

The "normal" uninstall option won't work. For each of these items, and the one below, tap and hold until you see the full menu of commands. From there, tap Delete. After you delete Phone.apk, you'll get stuck in a loop that the service failed, and you'll have to keep force closing it. Just reboot at this point.

4. Back in Root Browser, go to /Data/Data

5. Delete com.android.phone

6. Reboot.

At this point, my Nook boots cold in about 20 seconds, and application transitions are snappy. I haven't experienced any crashes with this configuration, and that's steady use of Gmail, Facebook, Dolphin, Netflix, YouTube, Feedly and various other apps. All apps except for Netflix are the most current versions from the store and work perfectly.

It goes without saying that most games won't work well, but if you're looking to get some productivity out of this tablet, these settings worked the best for me.