4 ms·

I have a few of these Kobo Touch readers that haven't been touched in years, so no idea if the batteries even still work. Even though I'd never tried them befor

by ralferoo 10mo ago

I have a few of these Kobo Touch readers that haven't been touched in years, so no idea if the batteries even still work. Even though I'd never tried them before, I got 3 as a local shop (WHSmiths in the UK) was having a clearance sale as they were being discontinued, so I got 3 of them for less than the price of 1 would normally cost, and I'd read they were quite hackable. I really liked the idea of using them, and while I did take one on holiday once, I found that I just couldn't put up with the slow speed of page transitions and the screen flickering every page turn. For the speed issue, if it's limited by the time to render a page, I wondered why they wouldn't just cache the rendered previously page and pre-generate the next page while you were reading the first. I understand why the page flickers, but it always seemed to me that doing partial refreshes of the screen would be much better aesthetically. Maybe the more recent ones actually do that, although I got the impression that manufacturers had just moved back to LCD screens because people liked colours more than battery life. Certainly not long after I bought my Kobo, my mum upgraded from an e-ink Kindle to an LCD one which seemed like a step backwards to me, but she was much happier with it. So, just wondering if any of the issues around page turning are addressed in this custom OS and app. If so, I'll dig around in my junk box to try it out. Otherwise I guess they're likely to stay there for another decade!

bondarchuk 10mo ago
>For the speed issue, if it's limited by the time to render a page It's not, it's a physical limitation of the e-ink screen. Any e-reader I've seen does full refresh every n pages where n is user-settable.
andrepd 10mo ago
> I understand why the page flickers, but it always seemed to me that doing partial refreshes of the screen would be much better aesthetically. Well but this is exactly what they do ahahaha x) You can set how many page turns between full refreshes in the settings.
- ralferoo 10mo ago
  I guess maybe mine is just too old from before they got this sorted. From what I remember, mine always fully turns black then clears before rendering. Even big areas of the page that are white both before and after, there was always a full screen black flash. I wouldn't be at all bothered if it was just the areas with text that went fully black before clearing, but it's very jarring full screen.
  - crtasm 10mo ago
    I think installing KOReader would let you configure it https://github.com/koreader/koreader/wiki/Installation-on-Kobo-devices https://github.com/koreader/koreader/wiki/Installation-on-Ko... That said I have a 2012 Kobo Mini with the option in stock firmware (and an undocumented "only refresh when I choose to" setting too). Maybe there's a firmware update for yours that would add it?
    - ralferoo 10mo ago
      I dug one of mine out of the cupboard and just checked. There's an option for refresh after every: with options from 1 page to 6 pages. I guess better than I remembered, but that's still not what I was after. What I really want is for the framebuffer to remember past pixels, so that the blacking out is restricted to only areas where there previously were pixel. I don't really mind noise on where the text was while the page is replaced, it the big areas flashing black needlessly that's distracting. I might try out this firmware over the holidays though. If I get back into using the kobo as an e-reader, maybe I'll look at the issue myself now that it's open source, if it's not been addressed by someone already.
      - crtasm 10mo ago
        In case it's unclear, KOReader is an application you can run - not replacement firmware. For the stock reader I believe this was the option I changed to disable automatic refresh entirely : https://old.reddit.com/r/kobo/comments/pbqey3/page_refresh_intervals_10/hae72uc/ https://old.reddit.com/r/kobo/comments/pbqey3/page_refresh_i...
carlosjobim 10mo ago
Your devices must be really really old. Eink screens have been plenty fast enough for book reading for about a decade now.

bondarchuk 10mo ago

>For the speed issue, if it's limited by the time to render a page It's not, it's a physical limitation of the e-ink screen. Any e-reader I've seen does full refresh every n pages where n is user-settable.

andrepd 10mo ago

> I understand why the page flickers, but it always seemed to me that doing partial refreshes of the screen would be much better aesthetically. Well but this is exactly what they do ahahaha x) You can set how many page turns between full refreshes in the settings.

ralferoo 10mo ago
I guess maybe mine is just too old from before they got this sorted. From what I remember, mine always fully turns black then clears before rendering. Even big areas of the page that are white both before and after, there was always a full screen black flash. I wouldn't be at all bothered if it was just the areas with text that went fully black before clearing, but it's very jarring full screen.
- crtasm 10mo ago
  I think installing KOReader would let you configure it https://github.com/koreader/koreader/wiki/Installation-on-Kobo-devices https://github.com/koreader/koreader/wiki/Installation-on-Ko... That said I have a 2012 Kobo Mini with the option in stock firmware (and an undocumented "only refresh when I choose to" setting too). Maybe there's a firmware update for yours that would add it?
  - ralferoo 10mo ago
    I dug one of mine out of the cupboard and just checked. There's an option for refresh after every: with options from 1 page to 6 pages. I guess better than I remembered, but that's still not what I was after. What I really want is for the framebuffer to remember past pixels, so that the blacking out is restricted to only areas where there previously were pixel. I don't really mind noise on where the text was while the page is replaced, it the big areas flashing black needlessly that's distracting. I might try out this firmware over the holidays though. If I get back into using the kobo as an e-reader, maybe I'll look at the issue myself now that it's open source, if it's not been addressed by someone already.
    - crtasm 10mo ago
      In case it's unclear, KOReader is an application you can run - not replacement firmware. For the stock reader I believe this was the option I changed to disable automatic refresh entirely : https://old.reddit.com/r/kobo/comments/pbqey3/page_refresh_intervals_10/hae72uc/ https://old.reddit.com/r/kobo/comments/pbqey3/page_refresh_i...

carlosjobim 10mo ago

Your devices must be really really old. Eink screens have been plenty fast enough for book reading for about a decade now.