Well after testing this firmware out I am actually somewhat impressed. Which considering my past experience with the firmware releases says a lot as I wasn't expecting much.
Please note all impressions are from a sideloaded firmware update
Pros:
- epub book title is GONE when reading a book. Personally while I didn't like this and didn't want it they really should have put an option in the reading settings to turn in on or off rather than just removing it.
- I actually like the new home screen, I think it is much better than the carousel. The "Reading" & "Store" headings are gone finally. Wishlist has been moved to bookstore menu and while I haven't explored this menu much I could come to like it if they could fix some things in the desktop app like deleting previews deletes the book from your wishlist... dumb dumb dumb. Again make it an option, "Do you wish to delete this from your wishlist as well?"
- initially didn't like the sleep mode full screen bookcover when sleeping after seeing a screenshot of it. Having experienced it for myself I still don't like it however what I don't like is that it is so big. What I think would improve it is to keep the width of the box the about same, move % read to appear either after Sleeping or just below it and reduce the height of the box, see spoiler for what I am thinking here:
Cons:
- Top page margin is now bigger than it previously was, would rather this was set back to where it was pre-book title.
- Windows/orphans still exist, would be nice to see this fixed before epubs become obsolete.
- Page turns much slower, more prone to double page turns because touches to turn pages didn't seem to register.
- don't really like the new wifi icon, just not what I would think of as representing wifi
- The search bar on the home screen just seems out of place, perhaps a 4th option on the bottom of the screen that just says "Search" which brings up a search window rather than having a whole bar across the top of the screen.
- Don't need to see a finished book on the home screen.