The Android development community has been hard at work at bringing the Ice Cream Sandwich to devices that have yet to get their own official releases. The fruits of their labor are certainly sweet, because Ice Cream Sandwich finally makes its appearance on the Nook Color. Thanks to XDA-Developers forum members dalingrin and fattire, an ICS-based CyanogenMod 9 ROM is now available for download.

The ROM is not fit for daily use, however, as there are several bugs that still need working on. As such, it is not advised that novice users try experimenting with this ROM. Only if you're familiar with working with ROMs do we suggest trying out this preview release.

The CM9 ICS ROM has several operational functions, such as:

• Bluetooth
• WiFi
• Backlight
• Accelerometer
• Improved, but not perfect, stability
• Google Apps
• SetCPU/overclock
• Real data usage info (not stubbed out)
• Battery levels/charging
• Physical menu button
• Touchscreen
• 3D Games
• USB gadget in kernel (i.e. mounting your SD card to your computer)
• Screenshots
• Build system (for auto-creating upgrade zips)

At the moment, the sound, video, and full 2D acceleration functions are not yet working. The ROM's developers are still hard at work to address those issues. There may be more glitches that will be reported as more people test the ROM for themselves.

Requirements

If you would like to try this CyanogenMod 9 Ice Cream Sandwich ROM out for yourself on your Nook Color, you'll need a few things:

• A rooted Nook Color with ClockworkMod Recovery installed
• Backup of the data on your Nook Color, in case the data may get lost or corrupted during the update process
• A copy of the CyanogenMod 9 Ice Cream Sandwich ROM sneak peek 2.  Get it here.

Instructions

If you've met all the requirements, we may now proceed to installing the sneak peek 2 version of the CyanogenMod 9 ICS ROM to your Nook Color:

1. After you've downloaded the CM9 ICS ROM, copy the file into the root of your SD card.
2. Boot your device into ClockworkMod Recovery.
3. Make a Nandroid back up, so you may revert to your current ROM should something happen.
4. Select “Wipe Data/Factory Reset.”
5. Navigate to “Install ZIP from SD Card” and select the CM9 ICS ROM file.
6. Once the file has finished flashing, choose “Reboot your system now” from the menu.

After your device has rebooted, your Nook Color should now be running on the sneak peak 2 (preview) version of CyanogenMod 9 based on Ice Cream Sandwich. Congratulations!