What do you do when the original charger that came with your Barnes & Noble Nook Color tablet conks out?
Short Answer: Use any modern smartphone charger.
Long Answer:
Recently, the charger that came with my Barnes & Noble Nook Color tablet blew. Since this product is not very popular in India – I got it as a gift from my US-based sister – I couldn’t find an original spare. I took my sister’s advice to try using a regular mobile phone charger.
This alternative works. Just power down your tablet completely before connecting it to the charger. You can be sure of success when you see the following telltale signs on the Nook Color device:
- The NC boots up automatically as soon as the mains-connected mobile charger is plugged into it. Within a few seconds, you should see the familiar “Read Forever” message on the screen. All this happens even though you haven’t touched the power-on button
- Although the Quick Settings screen will display “Not charging” – in contrast to the customary “Charging” message that’s shown when the original charger is used – don’t despair. This is a false alarm, probably meant to nudge NC customers to buy an original charger for around $75. You’re okay unless you see “Discharging”, which is the error message signaling that the device is really not charging
- If you’re up to watching grass grow, you’ll be rewarded by seeing an increase in the battery % figure under Quick Settings.
Although I happened to use an Android smartphone charger in my case, I don’t see why any other late model smartphone charger approved by Barnes & Noble wouldn’t work.
One caveat with using a mobile charger: Longer charging time.
That said, this solution is workable and can at least serve as a stop gap measure until you can source an original NC charger from abroad or it becomes widely available in India.