Kobo Firmware 2.8.1: pass or fail? (poll)

[jackastor]

So 2.8.1 is out. What do you think?

What Change do you think would make a big improvement over all to 2.8.1? How would you suggest they implement the Home screen? Tiles or Old School? Or choice of Home Screens?

What major advantage/disadvantage did you find in 2.8.1?

What would your ideal kobo interface be?

Have fun and be honest share your pros/cons and likes and dislikes.

regards

JAck

[tempest@de]

I like it, I like the changes in the menus, but most off all I’m happy that I no longer have to press 2 or 3 times in the home button when I want to go to the home screen. Also like the possibility to insert the page number when navigating in a shelve, I know that some people don’t like this feature, and would like to navigate by author, but for me that is not essential, when I want to read something from a particular author I just do a search in the library by the name off the author, when I don’t know what to read I navigate the shelves searching for the next book.

I miss the details button that was available before, I now that if I make a long press it will show the details but I would like to have that button back, aside that I think I wouldn’t make changes, off course I’m a user that doesn’t require much but it would be nice to have the ability for each user to personalize the reader according to their wishes, but since that is not possible I’m quite happy with my glo, having said that I’m going to read now.

[danskmacabre]

Seems pretty stable.
I can remove what I want from the front page.
formatting and text looks ok.

Would be nice one day for it to support SD cards properly tho, but I still give it a pass.

[treadlightly]

I'm glad the epub top margin is gone now. I didn't like the new home screen at first, but have gotten used to it and like the last shelf tile. I still prefer the previous sleep screen with the banner across the top and the capitalized "Page x of y" at the bottom margin. Why is that "of" italicized?

[DNSB]

So far the only issues I've found have been relatively minor. I don't use shelves so they haven't been an issue. I do make heavy use of the search bar and would like it to have an icon on the top bar which would save me a couple of taps.

Two utilities that I've found very useful are davidfor's KoboUtilities to control the home page tiles along with many other useful functions and metazoa's patch generator to allow using the advanced features on all fonts, reducing the range of the font size control but allowing finer control inside that range, changing the line spacing and slightly reducing the lower margin.

Regards,
David

[adbosch]

I'm not at all happy that the top margin has gone. It makes the screen way too stuffed.

And every x pages next page jumps 3 pages. Incredible.

[Canuck_in_Japan]

Originally Posted by adbosch

I'm not at all happy that the top margin has gone. It makes the screen way too stuffed.

*sigh* You can please 100% of the people 0% of the time.

[roger64]

I am very happy the top-margin is gone. So for this reason, I give it a PASS

Easier use of side-loaded fonts.
Better reactivity.

But many bugs are still here (loooong paragraph is a shame). Some very awkward decisions (to change page with the library), some very ugly and hardly readable tiles...

Still some work to do...

[OldDarth]

Though I used 2.6.1 for only a few days, once I upgraded, had to do it manually, 2.8.1 noticeably improved the speed of boot up time. Maybe because my Kobo Touch is 905C model, I've had no issues with ghosting so far.

While I like the number of pages done by chapter, I also wish that the number of pages by book was displayed as well right after the chapter summary. It may be that said wish should not be directed towards firmware upgrades but towards Calibre/Kepubs...

So with my limited exposure to 2.6.1 I give 2.8.1 a thumbs up but will decline from voting because of lack of use of the previous firmware.

[ewphoenix123]

The Firmware is getting better and long standing bugs are ironed out and it's overall snappier then 2.5.2, and with Metazoas patch it's almost where I want it to be screen-estate wise.

[booklover6]

I didn't notice any difference on my Mini. I didn't like it on my Glo, so I went back to 2.6.1. So for me it was a fail. It had a lot of bugs. When I can't open and read a book I've been reading, it's a fail.

[jlynton]

I voted "pass", but would rather have given it 7/10. Although great improvements have been made, kobo does not live up to it's blurb about being able to load up to 30,000 books on the microSD card. While I suppose that this is technically possible, it would slow down the device to the point of making it, to all purposes, useless. Also there is an issue with regards to covers.

[franklekens]

Why on earth are people glad the "top margin" is gone? I never knew it was a problem. Now the text of Gutenburg books & the like starts *right* underneath the bezel. That makes the screen look stuffed and cheap, it makes for unpleasant reading. In less than optimal light conditions (darkish, yet not quite dark enough to turn on the backlight) if the light doesn't fall on the device directly, the top line of text will be in the shade of the bezel. That's just ridiculous.

And if it's true, as adbosch says, that it's still "every x pages next page jumps 3 pages", they haven't fixed one of the most annoying bugs. (In fact, if it's *really* 3 pages now, they've even made it worse.)

[jackie_w]

Originally Posted by franklekens

Why on earth are people glad the "top margin" is gone? I never knew it was a problem. Now the text of Gutenburg books & the like starts *right* underneath the bezel. That makes the screen look stuffed and cheap, it makes for unpleasant reading. In less than optimal light conditions (darkish, yet not quite dark enough to turn on the backlight) if the light doesn't fall on the device directly, the top line of text will be in the shade of the bezel. That's just ridiculous.

Do you use Calibre to transfer epubs to your Kobos? If so, there is a fairly easy way to add your preferred top margin to all your epubs. It would need you to resend all your epubs to the Kobo but you wouldn't need to manually edit each epub to add the top margin.

[Uschiekid]

Originally Posted by franklekens

Why on earth are people glad the "top margin" is gone? I never knew it was a problem. Now the text of Gutenburg books & the like starts *right* underneath the bezel. That makes the screen look stuffed and cheap, it makes for unpleasant reading. In less than optimal light conditions (darkish, yet not quite dark enough to turn on the backlight) if the light doesn't fall on the device directly, the top line of text will be in the shade of the bezel. That's just ridiculous.

because that issue can be easily fixed with calibre or sigil, whereas having too big a border couldn't.

not that i cared all that much one way or the other. but would prefer a choice to adjust top/bottom margins from zero to whatever like the side margins.

but the people who complained about not liking it the other way were at least right that your complaint can be fixed easily when theirs couldn't.