Aura HD Kobo Aura HD Impressions Thread - Page 27

davidfor · 05-20-2013, 07:36 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by taming

When you are in "Books", the search default is your library. When you are reading a book, the default is to search in the book. It is only on the home page that the default is the store. I guess you will have to tap library before you search from there.

I don't know about the Aura, but for the Glo and Touch that changed a little with 2.5.0. Before that, if you were in the "Reading" part of the home page, search would have "Library" selected. In the bookstore, it would be "Bookstore". Now it is always Bookstore.

The other change to searching the library, is that if the WiFi is active, it will search the bookstore after displaying the results in the library.

RZetlin · 05-20-2013, 09:50 AM

There are a lot of minor changes to the Aura that makes it different from the Glo.

Case

Glo: Have a rubbery plastic case with a quilted back. Kobo bright white logo is located at the button and back of the case.

Aura: The case is made out of smooth plastic. At first my initial impression of the case is of a cheap plastic tray. Now that had time with the Aura, I think the developers wanted to mimic more of a metal casing. The case reminds me of picture frame. The Aura does feel heavier than the Glo. With the grooves at the back, the Aura was designed to be held with two hands. Kobo faded white logo is located at the button and back of the case vertically.

Front Interface

Glo: Shows the 4 books that you recently opened.

Aura: The interface is based on a “living” tile concept. Not only does the Aura shows the 3 recently opened books, but new books added, shelves opened, a sync tile and activities done in extras. There is a busier and cluttered feeling to the interface as if the designers have all this room, but doesn’t know what to do with it. The downside is the front interface does not show recently opened books stored on the SD Card. I don’t know why, because even the Glo can show recently opened books located on the SD Card.

Sleep/Power off

Glo: Anytime you sleep and power off the Glo, you are greeted by a “smiley” face icon. This is very reminiscent of the Mac OS 9 interface.

Aura: No “smiley” face icon. Just the words “Sleeping” and “Powered off” show up. I guess the developers want to go with a more mature feeling with the Aura and cut out the cute icons.

Shelves

Glo: Covers are shown in a 3 x 2 grid. Navigational buttons are located at the button of the screen. No back button. There is a navigation drop down menu at the top of the screen.

Aura: Covers are shown in a 4 x 3 grid. There are no navigational buttons, but instead you have swipe left or right to go to the next screen. There is back button. Navigation drop down menu is located on the left top of the screen.

Any books stored on the SD Card are regenerated every time when the device is turned off/on. With a quick processor, the covers are generated very quickly. I don’t know this issue exist on the Aura because Glo 2.5 software solved this exact same issue.

Table of Contents

Glo: Navigational buttons are located at the button of the Table of Contents

Aura: There are no navigational buttons instead you have to select “Page x of X” at the top right of the page and then enter the page number you want to go to. This is cumbersome to do. Alternative is to swipe left or right at the button of the screen to turn the page.

Reading Settings: Both same reading settings except the Aura have the option to remove page number in the margins.

taming · 05-20-2013, 10:10 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by RZetlin

Front Interface

Glo: Shows the 4 books that you recently opened.

Aura: The interface is based on a “living” tile concept. Not only does the Aura shows the 3 recently opened books, but new books added, shelves opened, a sync tile and activities done in extras. There is a busier and cluttered feeling to the interface as if the designers have all this room, but doesn’t know what to do with it. The downside is the front interface does not show recently opened books stored on the SD Card. I don’t know why, because even the Glo can show recently opened books located on the SD Card.

I have had some success getting the home page more to my liking. For example, I currently have five book tiles, three shelves, and sync on my home screen.

It seems that epubs on the SD card show on my home screen (letting the calibre driver send the covers), but .kepub.epub on the SD card do not. The lack of .epub covers on the SD card (without a driver adjustment) is an acknowledged bug.

Great job with your impressions of the Aura. K to you!

samhy · 05-20-2013, 10:24 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by RZetlin

Reading Settings: Both same reading settings except the Aura have the option to remove page number in the margins.

If you mean the number in the top right corner, I think you can remove it too on the Glo. At least, it's possible on the Mini and I'm pretty sure to have seen this while playing with some Glos in store.

Otherwise, nice comparison

PeterT · 05-20-2013, 10:28 AM

The page # in the margin is dependent on the format of the books being read. If it's a standard ePub then yes, there is an option to remove the display of page #.

If on the other hand it is a kepub, either straight from Kobo via WiFi or Desktop, or via the enhanced Kobo Driver in calibre, then there is not a # in the margin; rather, it's at the bottom of the screen.

Jaden · 05-20-2013, 10:42 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by davidfor

You can't directly add an annotation. But, pressing the top right corner of the screen adds a bookmark. Then in the annotations list, you can add a note to the bookmark. This works for PDFs as well.

Thank you. I had forgotten that booksmarks are also listed under annotations and that you can add a note to them. (I think I have never used that feature.

)

Jaden · 05-20-2013, 10:59 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by RZetlin

Sleep/Power off

Aura: No “smiley” face icon. Just the words “Sleeping” and “Powered off” show up. I guess the developers want to go with a more mature feeling with the Aura and cut out the cute icons.

I must admit that this is one thing I miss on my Aura.

Call me immature for all I care, but I liked the smiling Kobo face when powering on (and the other faces whenever they appeared).

Yes, it may be a bit more mature, but it's also colder. It was so nice to be "greeted" by a friendly face and now there are only dots.

I know, both readers are only electronic devices, but with them having faces, we get more attached to them. Some products are even designed to look like they were having faces, cars or vacuum cleaners and other products, for example.

Jaden · 05-20-2013, 11:13 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Icey

Hello,
I would like to acquire a reading light to read large pdf file. (100 MB)
Most of them are in A4 format.
So I wanted to ask you if the machine is responsive and fast when turning pages and when zooming

I wouldn't exactly call it fast - due to the nature of E-Ink. But larger files get opened pretty quickly on the Aura (tried ebooks that were over 100 MB in size and PDF/CBZ that were about 65 MB).

Quote:

I also wanted to know how is the management of margins. A pdf file that does not contain is that the Kobo will add margins?

No, but the PDF reader has a footer (page X of Y) which takes away a little of the reading space. The CBZ/CBR reader doesn't have that, so if your PDF is all pictures, you might want to split them, save them as single images, create a CBZ/CBR and read it there.

It's also easier to turn pages in CBZ reader - you just have to tap while in the PDF reading mode you have to scroll until a black bar appears that you have to press to turn the page.

Quote:

Also, in case there are margins, is that it is possible to remove like the iPad with Goodreader application (ie it defines the new margins ourselves) ?

I don't have an iPad so I can't compare and comment, sorry. But if you have large margins in the file, it would be good to crop them before transferring the PDF to the Aura. That way you may be able to read zoomed only to the width of the screen, which will result in much less scrolling.

Quote:

The screen is large enough to read pdf files in landscape mode ?

It highly depends upon the PDF file you are using.

I have one that I bought from Kobo which I can even read in portrait mode. Others are not good to read even in landscape (bad scans, for example).

Also if you read zoomed in landscape and turn the page, you will end up in the lower left corner instead of the upper left, which will result in extra scrolling (doesn't happen in portrait mode).

It's nothing that can't be managed by scrolling up, but it's annoying anyway.

RZetlin · 05-20-2013, 01:14 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by taming

It seems that epubs on the SD card show on my home screen (letting the calibre driver send the covers), but .kepub.epub on the SD card do not. The lack of .epub covers on the SD card (without a driver adjustment) is an acknowledged bug.

Great job with your impressions of the Aura. K to you!

Thanks.

Some of the bugs in the Aura were resolved through the Glo 2.5 update.

Since Aura and Glo share the same software version, I don't know why these bugs exist.

----------------------
On a different note, for those were are wondering if the Aura makes a good manga reader or not, here are some screenshots and you can judge for yourself.

Personally, the larger size does make a difference.

Spoiler:

Bittybye · 05-20-2013, 03:07 PM

I did the latest update when I was syncing my new books, but now all my books that were on my SD card (99% of my books) are gone.

Any ideas or do I need to take the card out then put it back?

RZetlin · 05-20-2013, 03:41 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bittybye

I did the latest update when I was syncing my new books, but now all my books that were on my SD card (99% of my books) are gone.

Any ideas or do I need to take the card out then put it back?

If your computer supports it, put your SD card into your PC to see if there are any books or not.

Bittybye · 05-20-2013, 04:10 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by RZetlin

If your computer supports it, put your SD card into your PC to see if there are any books or not.

There is. All of them are there

RZetlin · 05-20-2013, 04:51 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bittybye

There is. All of them are there

Try copying your books to your PC.

Format the card.

Copy your books back to the card.

Bittybye · 05-20-2013, 05:07 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by RZetlin

Try copying your books to your PC.

Format the card.

Copy your books back to the card.

The reader sees the disk, but not the books. And the card was formatted before, after I fixed another problem I was having it's worked perfectly. It's not the disk or the formatting.

larrymohr · 05-21-2013, 05:14 AM

[QUOTE=RZetlin;2519508]There are a lot of minor changes to the Aura that makes it different from the Glo.

Glo: Shows the 4 books that you recently opened.

Aura: The interface is based on a “living” tile concept. Not only does the Aura shows the 3 recently opened books, but new books added, shelves opened, a sync tile and activities done in extras. There is a busier and cluttered feeling to the interface as if the designers have all this room, but doesn’t know what to do with it. The downside is the front interface does not show recently opened books stored on the SD Card. I don’t know why, because even the Glo can show recently opened books located on the SD Card.

The carousel on the Glo actually shows 5 books. However, if you load 5 or more new books, the new books show in the carousel and the books you were reading go to the end of the list.

The Tiles on the Aura can actually show up to 9 books if you haven't accessed READING STATS, or any of the Extras. If you load 30 new books onto the Aura, only 1 book is displaced with a single Tile that gives you the number of new books added and access to the newly loaded books by sending you to the Recently Read books list in the Library.

If I put books on a microSD card they show as a single Tile. If I then open one of these books (I tried epub and pdfs) they show normal Tiles although there were some issues with incorrect covers.

Also note that if one of your older Tiles gets pushed off the end of Column 3, it will return once you have dismissed other Tiles.

Larry

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05-20-2013, 09:50 AM	#392
RZetlin Addict Posts: 383 Karma: 3461302 Join Date: Mar 2013 Location: Canada Device: Kobo Aura One, Kobo Glo, Kobo Aura HD (RIP)	There are a lot of minor changes to the Aura that makes it different from the Glo. Case Glo: Have a rubbery plastic case with a quilted back. Kobo bright white logo is located at the button and back of the case. Aura: The case is made out of smooth plastic. At first my initial impression of the case is of a cheap plastic tray. Now that had time with the Aura, I think the developers wanted to mimic more of a metal casing. The case reminds me of picture frame. The Aura does feel heavier than the Glo. With the grooves at the back, the Aura was designed to be held with two hands. Kobo faded white logo is located at the button and back of the case vertically. Front Interface Glo: Shows the 4 books that you recently opened. Aura: The interface is based on a “living” tile concept. Not only does the Aura shows the 3 recently opened books, but new books added, shelves opened, a sync tile and activities done in extras. There is a busier and cluttered feeling to the interface as if the designers have all this room, but doesn’t know what to do with it. The downside is the front interface does not show recently opened books stored on the SD Card. I don’t know why, because even the Glo can show recently opened books located on the SD Card. Sleep/Power off Glo: Anytime you sleep and power off the Glo, you are greeted by a “smiley” face icon. This is very reminiscent of the Mac OS 9 interface. Aura: No “smiley” face icon. Just the words “Sleeping” and “Powered off” show up. I guess the developers want to go with a more mature feeling with the Aura and cut out the cute icons. Shelves Glo: Covers are shown in a 3 x 2 grid. Navigational buttons are located at the button of the screen. No back button. There is a navigation drop down menu at the top of the screen. Aura: Covers are shown in a 4 x 3 grid. There are no navigational buttons, but instead you have swipe left or right to go to the next screen. There is back button. Navigation drop down menu is located on the left top of the screen. Any books stored on the SD Card are regenerated every time when the device is turned off/on. With a quick processor, the covers are generated very quickly. I don’t know this issue exist on the Aura because Glo 2.5 software solved this exact same issue. Table of Contents Glo: Navigational buttons are located at the button of the Table of Contents Aura: There are no navigational buttons instead you have to select “Page x of X” at the top right of the page and then enter the page number you want to go to. This is cumbersome to do. Alternative is to swipe left or right at the button of the screen to turn the page. Reading Settings: Both same reading settings except the Aura have the option to remove page number in the margins.

05-20-2013, 10:28 AM	#395
PeterT Grand Sorcerer Posts: 12,160 Karma: 73448616 Join Date: Nov 2007 Location: Toronto Device: Nexus 7, Clara, Touch, Tolino EPOS	The page # in the margin is dependent on the format of the books being read. If it's a standard ePub then yes, there is an option to remove the display of page #. If on the other hand it is a kepub, either straight from Kobo via WiFi or Desktop, or via the enhanced Kobo Driver in calibre, then there is not a # in the margin; rather, it's at the bottom of the screen.

05-20-2013, 03:07 PM	#400
Bittybye Addict Posts: 262 Karma: 505124 Join Date: Dec 2009 Device: PRS-T2	I did the latest update when I was syncing my new books, but now all my books that were on my SD card (99% of my books) are gone. Any ideas or do I need to take the card out then put it back?

05-21-2013, 05:14 AM	#405
larrymohr Zealot Posts: 104 Karma: 29873 Join Date: Jul 2010 Location: Surrey, B.C. Device: Samsung S6 tab, Kobo Sage, AURA One, Mini	[QUOTE=RZetlin;2519508]There are a lot of minor changes to the Aura that makes it different from the Glo. Glo: Shows the 4 books that you recently opened. Aura: The interface is based on a “living” tile concept. Not only does the Aura shows the 3 recently opened books, but new books added, shelves opened, a sync tile and activities done in extras. There is a busier and cluttered feeling to the interface as if the designers have all this room, but doesn’t know what to do with it. The downside is the front interface does not show recently opened books stored on the SD Card. I don’t know why, because even the Glo can show recently opened books located on the SD Card. The carousel on the Glo actually shows 5 books. However, if you load 5 or more new books, the new books show in the carousel and the books you were reading go to the end of the list. The Tiles on the Aura can actually show up to 9 books if you haven't accessed READING STATS, or any of the Extras. If you load 30 new books onto the Aura, only 1 book is displaced with a single Tile that gives you the number of new books added and access to the newly loaded books by sending you to the Recently Read books list in the Library. If I put books on a microSD card they show as a single Tile. If I then open one of these books (I tried epub and pdfs) they show normal Tiles although there were some issues with incorrect covers. Also note that if one of your older Tiles gets pushed off the end of Column 3, it will return once you have dismissed other Tiles. Larry

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