Firmware v4 versus v5 or why you should NOT upgrade

[hakim]

[Screenshots of the new version (version 5) can be seen on Dropbox.]

I would like to share my experience with the new firmware so that the others know what they will get before upgrading.
The Good:

• The whole user interface looks much better. Compared to the old one it looks modern. They updated the way the main menu and the menus inside applications look.

The Bad:

• From usability point of view the interface is much worse:
  1. The height of top and bottom status bars was increased quite a bit reducing the space for the text.
  2. Remaining battery life and time is no longer always shown in the bottom bar (huge bottom bar only shows page count). To see this information you have to touch the middle of the screen which is also used to open options menu in applications.
  3. To switch between open applications now requires additional touch/press which significantly increases the time you have to wait until the other application actually opens.
  4. The books are displayed in a carousel view in the main screen and there doesn't seem to be a way to change that. Again, even it kinda looks good but from functional (usability) point it's worse. You can only see three books at a time and quite often swipe gesture which should move the carousel is registered as a click and it starts opening some random book which at least to me is quite annoying because opening and closing of some "heavy" books takes some time.
  5. Some people reported that books from microSD card are not displayed in the carousel/recently viewed books list. So you have to manually search for them in the file manager.
• Even UI was changed, the core (backend) of the default applications seems to remain pretty much the same or it got some insignificant improvement:
  1. Web browser is still totally useless. It still doesn't render the same pages it didn't render before and it freezes on the same pages it was freezing while using the old firmware. The only change that I saw is that it also now shows some useless (to the normal user) error messages.
  2. PDF reader still freezes when zooming in/out slightly too fast and I haven't noticed any new features.
  3. Epub reader still shows blank pages when turning back pages.
  4. Haven't noticed any changes in Dropbox, music player and picture viewing apps. I don't use the built-in book store so don't know if there were any changes.
• The only third party application which is currently compatible with v5 is rkomar's comic viewer (pbimageviewer). All the others no longer work.
• They did not provide SDK (software development kit) for the new version. Third party applications can not link with the new library versions present in the new v5 firmware. The only option is to statically link with old library versions and to include the old libraries in the application which significantly increases the size of the app and developers can not use features present in updated libs.

Conclusion: the new version doesn't add much value but mostly makes everything pretty much worse.

Have you upgraded? What do you think about the new version?

[LucyOne]

Great comparison. I was thinking of buying an inkpad, but I'll only do that if FW 4.4 is available for download. The changes don't do anything for usability.

[hakim]

Originally Posted by LucyOne

Great comparison. I was thinking of buying an inkpad, but I'll only do that if FW 4.4 is available for download. The changes do do anything for usability.

Inkpad still comes with firmware v4 preinstalled by default and the user can upgrade manually by downloading v5 from their website (pressing "check for updates" when running v4 shows that there are no updates available).

[LucyOne]

Originally Posted by hakim

Inkpad still comes with firmware v4 preinstalled by efault and the user can upgrade manually by downloading v5 from their website (pressing "check for updates" when running v4 shows that there are no updates available).

I thought so, but I want to be sure there's a fallback plan in case any errors occur and service suggests I reinstall the FW.

[hakim]

I've added a link to some screenshots showing how the new version looks like in the first post.

[hakim]

I've asked pocketbook support to provide version 4.4 for Pocketbook Inkpad and just received an answer from Head of Pocketbook International Customer Support Oksana Kolomiiets:

The 4.4 version will be available for download on our official webpage within 2-3 weeks

[mvo]

Originally Posted by hakim

I've asked pocketbook support to provide version 4.4 for Pocketbook Inkpad and just received an answer from Head of Pocketbook International Customer Support Oksana Kolomiiets:

Great, thanks for that