Android-powered Pandigital Novel hacked

E-book readers are all the rage these days, and it is interesting to note that more and more folks in developed countries who have a good reading habit are making the jump to digital books. After all, having a single device that can tote around hundreds and hundreds of tomes without weighing you down is always a boon, especially if you tend to do a whole lot of traveling. Of course, having an e-book reader might be considered to be a luxury for some, but it might just be the device for you if you want a gadget that gives you back much more than you can ever imagine, as we know (the right) books open up the mind when read and digested. There are many e-book readers around at the omment, but at $179 a pop, the Pandigital Novel is not the most affordable one in the market although it is one of the cheapest general purpose Android tablets available in the US. Of course, it is rather strange that the company did not market the Pandigital Novel in that manner.

As mentioned earlier, the Pandigital Novel is powered by Google’s Android operating system, where it includes a 7″ color touchscreen display to keep up with the times. Of course, you will need to have the smarts and technical ability to be able to bypass the custom software interface that is found on the Pandigital Novel, but once you have done so, you are able to install third party apps, where among them include the Amazon Kindle app, Aldiko, or other eBook apps. Not only that, the Pandigital Novel can be an entry level portable media player with its ability to handle games and other media, although don’t expect its relatively slow processor to be able to keep things running nice and smooth.

Needless to say, it isn’t all a bed of roses, since currently there is no way for one to access the Google Android Market, so if you happen to want to have the latest apps running on your Pandigital Novel, you will need to download the APK installer files by yourself for each app that you want to install. Of course, a few hacks will also need to be applied if things were to be up and running without any hiccups. Heck, you can even have Google Calendar, Contacts, Maps, Voice, and Gmail apps running on the Novel as well if that’s your cup of tea.