Sideloading...

Ih8apple · January 30th, 2013, 07:41 PM

So my wife decided she wanted a tablet. I have a nexus 7, after tiring of being locked up with a Kindle Fire.

Well, she reads a lot of magazines, so I thought a bigger screen would be better for her, so I decided to get her a 10". Well, the Nexus 10 is $500, and she isn't real good at using Android anyway, so I got her a B&N Nook 9". Simpler interface, big screen half the price...

So I take it out of the box and try to get things set up for her... my God! I thought the Amazon app store was pathetic, the B&N one should be ashamed of itself. They don't even have friggin facebook!

So... with my old Kindle, I was able to sideload certain things (like a real browser, some google apps like currents, etc) by downloading the apk from 4shared, using ESfile explorer to run it, etc.

Is that possible on the nook? I read that they have the hard drive partitioned funny where that may not be possible? I really think if I could get her the standard facebook app, and maybe chrome or dolphin browser, she'd be happy with it.

Also, I would like to put swipe beta on it. Is that possible? I doubt it, but has anyone tried?

I for one will never ever stray away from the warm open goodness of a nexus with wide open android, but my wife has different needs than I do, and I think I can make this work for her...

grimlok78 · April 11th, 2013, 04:34 PM

Don't know if you are still having issues with your nook, I recently purchased one and found a website N2acards.com, they sell a sd card($50) or a download ($20) that will install Android 4.?? on it and unlock all the capabilities. Very easy to do and well worth the money. Hope this helps

philovance · April 12th, 2013, 02:42 PM

+1.this. I have the Nook HD+ running JB 4.1.2 with an androidfornook.com card. Download is only $10 and support is great. Also tried N2A but had problems they couldn't resolve and got a refund. Keep in mind that if you boot off the card the os will no longer see the Nook's internal storage. However., it will show up if connected as an mtp device and you can copy over media that some apps like mx player will see on start up.