Barnes & Noble Nook torn down and rooted — but still respected
but still respected — Barnes & Noble might be pitching the Nook to the literary set, but it turns out the Android-based dual-screen reader is pretty hacker-friendly as well: both the OS and filesystem are stored on a microSD card.
Context & Ripple Effects
Barnes & Noble entered the e-reader market only weeks ago, confirmed on December 6, 2009, as a Christmas-season Kindle rival pitched at the literary set — backed by free AT&T Wi-Fi in its stores nationwide since July and a stated plan to open its e-book sales to multiple platforms alongside a Plastic Logic partnership for early 2010.
The teardown changes the framing of that launch: because both the Nook's OS and filesystem live on a removable microSD card, the Android-based device turns out to be trivially hackable — rooting requires swapping a card, not cracking open sealed hardware. A product aimed at mainstream readers is simultaneously an open Android platform, which matters given the criticism in September 2009 that the Android open-source model had suffered a 'short circuit.'
First-order effects
- Rooters can replace or modify the Nook's entire operating system by writing a new microSD card, making the Barnes & Noble device one of the lowest-risk Android hacks of 2009 — no soldering, no irreversible bootloader surgery.
Second-order effects
- Barnes & Noble's declared strategy of selling e-books across multiple platforms softens the commercial threat of a rooted Nook: unlocked software does not automatically break the company's content funnel, unlike a fully locked Kindle-style stack.
Third-order effects
- If every Android-based dedicated reader ships with user-replaceable storage holding the OS, the line between single-purpose e-readers and general-purpose tablets is maintained only by vendor software choices — community firmware, not hardware, becomes the differentiator.
The trend: Android's open-source base is quietly converting purpose-built e-readers into hackable general-purpose devices, forcing hardware makers to compete on content and retail reach rather than software lock-in.