How to run HoneyComb (Android 3.0) on your Nook Color – Step by Step Guide

by Informer in Android,Guides

nook color honeycomb thumb | How to run HoneyComb (Android 3.0) on your Nook Color Step by Step GuideHoneyComb is next generation android 3.0 designed for android tablets. You can install HoneyComb on your Nook Color, one of the best e-reader available in market today, and use it as HoneyComb (Android 3) tablet. HoneyComb 3.0 will be installed on the external SD card (with at least 4gb storage) and Nook Color will boot HoneyComb from the SD card. Because nook loads HoneyComb from the SD card it will not void the warranty. To install HoneyComb on Nook Color follow the following instructions.

Requirement:

  1. Nook Color

  2. At least 4GB microSD card

  3. MicroSD card reader

  4. Virtual Image of HoneyComb for Nook color device

  5. Win 32 disk manager (Free disk manager image writing utility)

Step 1. Extract the content of the win 32 disk manager into a folder and launch win32diskimager.exe.

Step 2. Click on the folder icon and locate the image file of Virtual Image of HoneyComb for Nook color device.

Step 3. Select the drive letter of your SD card and click on “Write” button. Be careful as it will delete all the data on your SD card.

Step 4. Wait till the progress bar is finished and image has been written on the SD card. Safely remove the SD card from the Computer.

Step 5. Turn off you Nook Color and insert SD card with HoneyComb for Nook color device on it. Turn on your Nook Color and it should load HoneyComb 3.0.

Here is a video preview, running Android 3.0 Honeycomb on Nook.

You can also check out the following related articles:

  1. [Guide] How to Flash A Custom ROM On Any Android Phone Safely: A Complete Step-by-Step Tutorial
  2. Android 3.0 HoneyComb SDK Ported To Nexus One
  3. Android 3.0 Honeycomb SDK Preview Available – Android to Offer Enhanced Keyboard Layout, Web Browser, Camera Application & Much More!
  4. Google to offer developers more hands-on experience with Honeycomb and updates on the Android Ecosystem
  5. Android 3.0 Honeycomb SDK Now Available for Download!

Tagged as: android, android 3.0, guide, guides, honeycomb, how to, nook, nook color, step-by-step

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  • Tommy Towery

    I was having problems with your directions because of a stupid mistake. I failed to unzip the Image file before I wrote it to the SD card.

  • Yasmiyn

    Tommy, you can use an free sd formatting program to erase the sd card and rewrite the image. Do not try to write the image on the card without erasing it first the other image will just sit there and take up space you could be using for apps.

  • krysti

    Would this work if i already rooted my nook with the auto rooted?

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  • Garrett

    Well it booted and asked for a password to decrypt storage…totally lost )-:

  • http://www.inspiredgeek.com TechNerd

    @Garrett You are facing this problem because there is some problem in the boot loader of Honeycomb. To fix it insert your SD card in to card reader and hook it up to your computer. Locate boot partition of the AD card and find uImage file. Copy uImage file on your desktop and delete uImage file from the boot partition. Now copy the saved uImage file back on the boot partition and insert it back into Nook Color. Power up your Nook color and hopefully it should work.

    • bbergt

      I had the same problem with a Patriot class 10 32GB card. I messed around with it and found that it will boot occasionaly without requiring a password. No apparent rhyme or reason, it might work after 3 boot attempts or 10 boot attempts. I am sticking with a class 2 16GB Sandisk for now, a little slow but works.

  • Garrett

    Tried that and no go, gonna stick with 2.1 for now.

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  • Raymond Stone

    I successfully booted to Honeycomb, but now it shows my internal storage space as 656MB total, and only 572MB available. Any idea why it’s not recognizing total internal capacity?
    Thanks

  • Arise

    Have the same problem with the HC and the password, would be great if someone has a fix for it!

  • Garrett

    This is starting to look like a better option until HC is really ready for primetime with these devices. http://wiki.cyanogenmod.com/index.php?title=Barnes_%26_Noble_Nook_Color:_Full_Update_Guide

  • Arise

    That isn’t an operating system though is it?

  • Garrett

    It is a custom version of Android that basically unlocks more potential in devices and the Android OS.

  • arise

    Froyo or HC?

  • Garrett

    More info here http://www.cyanogenmod.com/ there was a news article recently indicating that once of their engineers/modders unlocked bluetooth functions in the Nook Color :-)

  • Garrett
  • arise

    skimmed over the site…its basically just Froyo with the bluetooth enabled? I can just load it on my SD card right?

  • Garrett

    I am just pointing out as an alternative, I am running the 2.1 version and think this is a better alternative than a flaky 3.0 install right now.

  • arise

    I tried installing the Froyo (2.1 right?) and it crashed out on me. Had multiple force closes and most of the time it won’t go past the “android_ ” blinking screen… just trying to get one that works without having to root my device.

  • Garrett

    You have to make sure you match the image to your version of B&N Android. I successfully installed 2.1 on my Nook Color with just this video.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MUoHALWvPts&feature=fvwrel

  • arise

    hmmm I have 1.1 not 1.00 or 1.01….

  • Garrett

    Thats what I had too :-) It works really well, just follow the video it should work unless you have a bad sd card?

  • arise

    I have 16gb class 10…from what I have read class 10 messes up

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  • Don

    I followed the instructions above, using a 4G MicroSD card with 3.9 G of space. I downloaded the “WIn32 disk manager” and the “Virtual Image of HoneyComb for Nook color device” files. I then unzipped both files. Open the disk manager and insert the nookhoney04.img file (3.41 G) into the disk manager for writing. then”click” on the “write ” box, when I do I keep getting a message stating”An error occurred when attempting to gt a handle on this file. Error 8″ and the img file will not write to my SD card Does any one know what the problem is? and the solution. Do I need a 8G SD card, but size wise the indicartion the img file should fit on the 4 G card.

    • Prplhze2000

      Don, trying it right now and same problem except I used an 8 GB card, level 4.

      • WD

        Try closing any explorer windows that are opened to the removable drive associated with the SD card. That fixed this issue for me

  • http://www.gotbaals.com Aaron

    This rocks, I like that you don’t have to root the nook in order to use this.

    I’m running into a problem though. I use a MAC and I’m having a hard time figuring out how to load the market app to the SD card. I’ve read the tutorials on nookdevs.com but I’m just not getting it. Any help would be great. Can it even be put onto the SD card without rooting the nook?

  • AL

    How do I install the market place?

  • CSB

    Interesting….I’m already using a rooted nook (froyo) so by booting up on my sd card with HC on it, I’m getting none of the Froyo functionality. When i have the sd card in and honeycomb is operating, I don’t have access to my nook features at all. Its just like a fresh, brand new honeycomb tablet. Is that right? I thought I’d still have my nook features. I guess I can download the nook app onto my nook (odd) but there has to be another way?

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  • http://www.nextdigit.com Ara

    I did this and it worked, now I want to format my 8 GB micro SD card, but it said your drive capacity is 117 MB, what can I do?

  • franz

    If you write an image to your sd card – the card gets ‘formated’ the way the image was created. The bootable image has multiple partitions on the card and if you mount such a card the system only sees one of them. This is the 117mb you can see. Your card still has its full capacity but you can’t directly access this.
    To fix this you need a partition editor – like gparted on linux. There are live images you can download if you don’t have a linux running… here: http://gparted.sourceforge.net/livecd.php

  • bill

    I got it running with no problem. I new to android, how do I get the app store running? Thanks

  • Chris

    What version of Nook should you be at? Does this remove all the nook book capability?

  • robin

    where is the android market Icon?????

  • Maria S

    I don’t quite understand why this doesn’t void the warranty. Every other tutorial to install honeycomb on nook says it DOES void the warranty so how is this different?

    • me yo

      Basically you are only booting into Honeycomb which is installed onto your SD card, no files or data is changed or wrote on the actual nook memory. Other guides such as installing froyo or auto-nooter change the nook itself hence voiding the warranty.

  • Bmayo1

    I just booted up and am very impressed. The touch is so much more responsive. So tempted to do the install. It runs fast from PNY micro sd class 10 16 GB card. One thing is I need to find out how to enlarge the font. I used the binary ZIP for win 32. It did the can’t find thing but still worked. Thanks very much for all your work. I am thinking dual boot. Is there a way to keep the B&N Bookstore stuff with a Honeycomb install?

  • Wahknobby

    Works wonderfully. The only problem I have is like one stated above. The image causes my 8Gb card to appear as 117mb. I understand why this is the way it is. Obviously the image needs to be able to fit on smaller cards. but I am having trouble manipulating the partitions created to move the extra unallocated space to the active partition. I have been trying to use Paragon Partition Manager but its very awkward and slow. I do not understand how to use gparted as stated above. Any one have any Ideas. I may have to move to CM7 instead of using Honeycomb. It just seemed harder to install Cm7

    • Alex

      OK, so it took me a little bit to figure this out and there is really no good answer on this site, so I thought I would throw my two cents in here.

      When you run the image software, what it does (at least on my 8GB SD Card) is it creates 4 separate partitions on the card. The first one is the visible one that you can see in Win Explorer and is only around 117MB. This is the boot image that will allow the nook to boot to the card. If you open Disk Manager you will see the other partitions, two of them are 667MB in size, these are the system and data partitions and there is a fourth one that is around 1.25GB and this one is for the SD Card storage in Android. Then at the end an unallocated amount, around 4.74GB.

      So the boot partition that you see as 117MB has nothing to do with how much space your SD card will have when you boot, only the 1.25GB is what you need to be concerned with. And after a little searching, I found this tool http://goo.gl/xEQX Easeus Partition Master Home Edition that will allow you to extend your SD Card partition.

      Do this at your own risk, not that it really matters as you can just delete all the partitions and format the card and start the process over if you mess it up.

      To extend the partition for the SD Card storage in Android from 1.25 simply run this program and have your SD card mounted in an SD card reader and find the SD card in the list of disk (mine was disk 2 since I only have the SD card and my 1 hard drive in my PC) and then find the partition called *: sdcard with a capacity of 1.25 GB and right click on it and select Resize/Move Partition. From there you can just move the slider to fill the extra unallocated space and hit OK, then you will need to apply the changes. BAM! No more 1.25 GB SD Card size, now you should have around 5.98GB (for the 8GB SD card I used).

      Also, @Ara, you can use this same software to delete all of the partitions and format the card back to your 8GB card if you are not familiar with DISKPART in windows.

      Please correct me if I am wrong on this, but this is how I see it all happening.

  • DaCut

    When trying to put the image on the SD card, I keep getting an error that there isn’t enough disk space, but I have a 16gb card. Anybody know what could be happening?

    • Rob

      I’m having the same problem with an 8GB card. Anyone have any advice?

      • tc

        I was having the same problem. Download and use win32diskimager-RELEASE-0.1-r15-win32 (older release), worked for me. ;-)

  • ameryx

    Have succeeded in booting into HC. When I go to theAndroid marketplace on the web, I get a message that my device is not associated with my Google account. Do I have to do something to get the marketplace to recognize my Nook Color so I can install apps? Thanks.

  • renee

    i was able to install it but no android market on my apps :(

  • Ghinao

    I get the password request issue. And no, deleting and recopying uImage doesn’t help. It doesn’t make any difference what so ever. I’ve heard that using XP instead of Vista could help with that, but my XP system won’t even open the card. It will only open the card if I format it. Needless to say, I can’t get this to work at all.

  • Dan

    I was able to install Honeycomb on my new Micro 4GB card after formatting. However, I wish to have the Market Place installed on the SD card also.

    Would like to have Market Place and Apps downloaded to SD card. Is this possible??

    I am fearful to flash the internal memory.

  • Dan

    I was able to install Honeycomb on my Nook Color without any problems. The software works great, however, I would like to download more apps to my SD card. Is this possible??

    I don’t want to change anything internally causing the warranty to be voided…

  • Terry

    I was wondering how long it takes to load at startup. Once I turn on my Nook it says loading in the center of the screen then shows Android in small lettering moving down the screen from the top left corner.

  • Ameryx

    Terry, it does seem to take awhile to boot from a fully powered of status. Remember, you are booting from the SD card. That may explain the slower boot…

  • angtx

    Will this work with Nook ver 1.2.0?

    • Rajith

      It did not run on my 1.2.0!!!
      Any guide pls……

      • Harold

        I got the same result. It did not run on my nook with sw ver 1.20. It just sets there blinking with the text “Android”

  • meiwolf

    Hi, Did everything instructed to convert it to Honeycomb but when booted up with the card, it just hangs at the android_ blinking…. It’s the latest version of the Nook Color…. does it not work for this version?
    Any help appreciated…thx!

  • Frank

    Thank you for the instructions, they were very simple and clear. Only exception is that I extracted the zip file before burning to the SD card. I installed the SD card. HC started booting up, but it is asking for a password? Any idea how to proceed?

  • http://www.inspiredgeek.com/2011/03/07/how-to-run-honeycomb-android-3-0-on-your-nook-color-step-by-step-guide/:// Bert Yancoskie

    Hi
    I followed the instruction, How to run HoneyComb (Android 3.0) on your Nook Color – Step by Step Guide and it works great thank you. But I’m having a problem with Kindle. I downloaded and installed Kindle for Android but when I open the App. it errors out. Does anyone know if this can be resolved without rooting my Nook?
    ..

  • Tifa

    Thanks!! Works great

  • gary c

    worked great installed on a 16gb sd card then resized the card with the above softwere thanks works great
    i just installed applanet and snappzmarket thay have every thing the android market dose and its all free

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