302 Spotted - new beta firmware 15.4 for PB302

[joepie]

Hi everyone,

Today I spotted the new beta firmware 15.4 for the PB302 on the russian forum. Not my achievement, credits go to Pocketbook. I'd just like to share for those interested.

http://translate.google.com/translat...26highlight%3D

[JimMcLaren]

I'd have to say this one goes backwards in functionality. It has very nice icons and I think there are a few more zoom options in PDFs. The rotate menu seems to work better. The good news stops there though. When reading PDFs the next button doesn't work although that's never worked reliably anyway. That was OK but now you can't slide the PDF page to get to the bottom. Since I read in landscape I can't read the whole page. Going back a version for now.

[JimMcLaren]

DO NOT INSTALL THIS UPGRADE! Fbreader180 won't open books at all. I tried to roll back to the previous beta of 15.4 & it wouldn't roll back. In FBreader the menu wouldn't come up after I rolled back. Adobe Viewer had the old icons. I successfully rolled back to the 15.3 beta.

[Metal Mick]

Hi Jim, et al,

many thanks for the information and warning. Following Joepie's link reveals you're not the only one to roll back, although others were able to resurrect their devices with 15.2.

Very disappointing, this shemozzle.

Regards,

Michael P

[JimMcLaren]

15.2 seemed to work for the most part. I've got 15.3 and am using the Hacked Adobe Viewer. That still works even though the regular Adobe Viewer didn't. I think fbreader works a little better on 15.3 so I'm staying put for now. Interestingly, some of the menus now work better. For example, the rotate menu rarely showed the ABC's before but it does every time now. Go figure.

[joepie]

Yesterday the Release Candidate version was published. The first comments seem to show that the RC is a lot better than the former beta. It seems they put a lot of effort in it. I may give this version a try.

I found it on:

http://translate.google.com/translat...26highlight%3D

[JimMcLaren]

I have to say I was pretty pleased with the latest firmware initially.

• PDFs load much faster.
• Rotating 90 degrees in PDFs and ePubs takes much less time. An order of magnitude less.
• Large epubs load a little bit faster and seem quicker navigating in.
• The menu icons are larger and easier to hit.
• I like the font for the Table of Contents but it's a little slow to load for some books.
• Note taking has changed dramatically. You can now highlight the text you want to instead of entire lines. Graphical annotations (drawing) is possible too. All the notes are stored in the text of the book so you can see it while reading.
• Fbreader180 doesn't work anymore. Fbreader works and seems to have most of the features that I need.
• Hacked adobe viewer works like it always did.
• Coolreader still works although I don't use the newest one. I still use the one originally ported to the 302.
• The few .chm files I have seem to work fine.
• The web browser doesn't seem to want to connect

I might still go back though. Even though it worked initially, suddenly I can no longer move PDFs with the touch screen. That's almost essential for me as technical PDFs are hard to read anyway, even in landscape. The saving grace might be that the hacked adobe viewer works.

[joepie]

I've noticed the speed increase as well, although it isn't stellar. Page turns just seem that bit smoother and faster, so it's quite enjoyable.

I must admit to be a light-user - ereaderwise - and only use the PB302 to read epubs and sometimes pdfs and .doc files. I don't do any notetaking, and use the standard Adobe Viewer most of the time.

As such, I've noticed that .doc and .rtf and .html files don't work in this version, but I can live with that for a couple of months. Hopefully a RC2 or final release will be released before then.

What I like about the RC is that the SD card reader seems to work properly 99% of the time, and doesn't corrupt the FAT anymore. At least I can use the SD now, even with a low class sd card. Pocketbook must have tweaked the timing on the SD card reader.

If the next version would take longer than 2 months to launch, or if I run into some bugs, I will consider to revert.

[guyanonymous]

The old firmwares corrupted the fat of the SD card reader? That would explain why 50% of the time windows asks to check the SD card for errors.

I cannot believe this device was not recalled.

[joepie]

The 15.2 firmware would invariably corrupt the FAT on my SD card within a matter of days. Most typically after performing a cold boot (ie. when it was off for a couple of hours), but I cannot rule out the shutdown routine.

The corruption would lead to an unreadable sd, and all files gone, so I soon gave up on using it. But as I said before, I'm really a light-user, I use it for a reading device, and do not expect anything tablet-like. All the books I care to read for a year (and more) fit easily on even half of the internal memory.

Still its nice to be able to use the sd from now, I do have a large ebook library on my PC, that I could bring on a vacation to browse at leisure.

If you think that the sd should have worked from day 1, I can only agree. Though a recall is perhaps a bit too much to ask. The problem seems to have gone away since installing the RC, so a quicker firmware release would have helped.

I do appreciate the ongoing effort though and will continue to check for newer versions as they appear.

[joepie]

Hi everyone,

RC2 just arrived, I'm downloading and will install in a minute.

You can find it on the same thread in the Ukranian forum:
translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&rurl=translate.google.com&sl=ru&tl =en&u=http://www.the-ebook.org/forum/viewtopic.php%3Ft%3D20439%26highlight%3D

I'll post when I find that new thing work/not work.

[joepie]

For the RC2 I did a clean install, formatting the internal memory first.

For me, the RC2 doesn't improve much on the RC, .html files can now be opened, but there's no support for button navigation. The go-to-page command in the menu works, but is too much of a hassle to turn pages every single time... There is support for button navigation in Adobe Viewer but button functions are preset and fixed. Settings for key mappings are ignored . @Jim, I tried to scroll pdf's via the touchscreen, but alas, nogo.

I reverted to RC1 but still nogo on the keymappings. Strange, because it worked for a couple of days under RC1. Perhaps formatting the internal memory caused some non-standard setting to disappear. I installed CoolReader3 and fbreader180 in the past, but don't plan to reinstall them now, as I don't use them much. I guess I won't find out if that's the key issue or not.

I reverted to 15.2, and the mappings work again, but my sd card was then KIA. Rendered completely inaccessable under 3 OSes, a smartphone and a camera... Well, it's a small loss, a 2Gig micro SD is cheaper than a 3.5" floppy (some 20 years ago) .

Updated again to RC2, still no luck on the mappings. As it is functionally and technically almost good enough for my user profile it will remain for a couple of weeks. The preset buttons are a bit of a nuisance, but at least it won't kill my sd cards. Will await the next version see if the mappings are supported again.

[guyanonymous]

How's 15.4 RC2 doing after a bit of time?

[JimMcLaren]

Originally Posted by guyanonymous

How's 15.4 RC2 doing after a bit of time?

I've been using it for just over a week now. It's stable. The web browser does connect. It remembers your passwords for wifi connections and is really not too bad. I don't use it a lot but it does work with gmail and mobileread which is good enough for me. It needs to be able to bookmark pages though. And the vertical scrollbar doesn't move up, only down

I don't have many complaints. I can't program the buttons in Adobe reader but reading PDFs works much better.

• If you are reflowing a page with multiple columns, the old reader would run them all together. The new one will flow from the bottom of the first to the top of the second, the bottom of the second to the top of the third, etc.
• Viewing the PDF in landscape you can scroll to the bottom of the page via buttons. Dragging using the touch screen doesn't work though.
• Taking notes is great. You can highlight as much or little as you want, not just complete lines. Previously you couldn't highlight the bottom half of the page (which would be on the second screen). Now it works great.

[guyanonymous]

Thanks!