New Nook Glowlight 4?

[Omnigeek]

Originally Posted by nick84

Any views on alternative software for GL4? The default one is slow and user unfriendly. I've tried android launcher and koreader but the battery goes down from 100 to 70 within one hour. There is software available for GL3 on XDA. Would it work on GL4?

Originally Posted by downeaster59

I have Nova Launcher, KOReader and some otehr apps installed on my GL 4. I have never seen that kind of a drop in battery life, even with WiFi always on. If your battery readings are accurate, something else is chewing up battery life or something is just plain wrong.

Agreed. I was flying all day yesterday. I chose to read on on the plane with my GL4 and I think the battery may have dropped to 70% after all that. I had the backlight on, wifi on, etc.

[nick84]

Thx. I'll give it another go. Currently I'm using Niagara but will check with Nova. There is a chance the battery in my unit is simply faulty.

[HLS]

The lenovo Nook is crappy. Slow and freezes

[AliceTheGorgon]

Originally Posted by downeaster59

OK, here's how to root the GL4.

So... I followed the instructions there, but after flashing the magisk-patched boot.img and rebooting, the screen stays entirely white. (It does flash black for a moment during boot.) It still shows up in adb, and if I use adb to tell it to reboot into the bootloader, it shows up in fastboot. I can issue commands on either, and they seem to succeed, but the screen stays white except for the full-screen flashing to black for a moment during boot.

Originally Posted by Renate

Ok, can you still get to fastboot? If so, here's how to proceed, carefully.

Tried the instructions in this post to see if it made a difference, but it still acts the same after flashing both files. (Thought the link to "http://su.barnesandnoble.com/nook/piper/8.1/gentoo/3.123" was a totally blank page, so I'm not sure what's even supposed to have been there.)


If anyone has any ideas on any way to get it working, I'd appreciate it.

[Renate]

Originally Posted by AliceTheGorgon

Tried the instructions in this post to see if it made a difference, but it still acts the same after flashing both files. (Thought the link to ... was a totally blank page

The latest update for this device is now:
http://su.barnesandnoble.com/nook/pi...123/update.zip
Did the nnglow21 work correctly?
Did the update work?

[AliceTheGorgon]

Originally Posted by Renate

The latest update for this device is now:
http://su.barnesandnoble.com/nook/pi...123/update.zip
Did the nnglow21 work correctly?
Did the update work?

Thanks! That worked perfectly! In hindsight, I should have double-checked the actual firmware version mine came with, and taken a bit more time with the process instead of letting my eagerness get ahead of me.

The 8.1 3.123 boot.img got the screen working again, and while the nook couldn't update, I was able to check the actual version it was on, and flash the correct version's boot.img, and then was able to update and get everything working properly, including magisk and nnglow. Now I've got the partitions all backed up to my computer for safekeeping, and everything is working swimmingly.

Thank you!

[MrBryan]

I have this thing rooted and every so often, quite reliably, the device will restart into recovery randomly and then drain the battery. Does anyone know how I might diagnose what is causing this and/or know of a common cause?

[MrBryan]

failing that... might there be a recovery with a setting that when nothing is selected, will boot into system normally after a 5 second timeout or similar?

[Renate]

The first thing that I'd try is to keep it on the charger to see if restarts under those conditions.
Since you're connected you can adb shell in.

C:\>adb shell
# dmesg -w

Then when it dies you might have something to go on.
You can even open another window and:

C:\>adb shell
# logcat

[MrBryan]

Thanks that's a good idea. I did go through DMESG logs and nothing stood out but no timestamp so hard to tell what happened right before it crashed.

It actually seems to be working well now that I flashed your neonoogie recovery image posted earlier in this thread, in place of the TWRP recovery I had, for some reason. I wouldn't have thought recovery would have any impact once booted... so perhaps a fluke.

I think it actually might have been when the screensaver kicks in that it crashed, since I keep finding it looks novel to have it displaying now. I did also remove Google play.

Edit: Does anyone know of a version of google play & play services that may work or can be made to work? A lot of apps require authentication via that to run at all now.

[MrBryan]

deleted message about bricking and recovering.

Saving the one useful part: it was while a new update happened which i believe is from here:

http://su.barnesandnoble.com/nook/pi...127/update.zip

[nmyshkin]

Originally Posted by MrBryan

Does anyone know of a version of google play & play services that may work or can be made to work? A lot of apps require authentication via that to run at all now.

It may be possible with some Magisk modules and microG. It used to be that microG could only be used on custom ROMs for which it was possible to enable GFS signature spoofing by various means (Xposed modules, Python routines). If my recent reading is correct it seems like Magisk can handle this for at least some stock ROMs.

Google "microG alternative stock rom".

But that's as far as my knowledge goes. I've done a number of microG installs on Cyanogenmod ROMs using both methods mentioned above, but have no experience at all with Magisk.

[MrBryan]

Thanks for replying, that gives me a starting place. I see for the early simple touch somebody had done extensive hacks to make it work

[nick84]

Is there a way to set up custom screensaver on GL4, i.e. book cover?

[Ryzir]

This is possible on the GL3.
The file is located at:
/data/data/com.nook.partner/shared_prefs/screen_saver_preference.xml

I changed mine to:

<?xml version='1.0' encoding='utf-8' standalone='yes' ?>
<map>
    <boolean name="pref_key_screen_saver_from_sdcard" value="true" />
    <string name="pref_key_screen_saver_from_path">/storage/emulated/0/Screensaver/sleep.jpg</string>
    <boolean name="pref_key_screen_saver_low_power" value="false" />
    <int name="key_screensaver_img_index" value="5" />
</map>

I use the old Calibre Companion app (v5.4.3.3) and have it set to save the book cover as sleep.jpg at that location when I open a book.

It works really well and I've been curious if it's possible to do this on the GL4.