I've had my T68 Lynx for about a week now and I'd thought I'd give my first impressions. My first reader was a Pocketbook 302 which has outstanding firmware. When it died I went looking for something new. I tried the Aura HD but was disappointed. So far I'm pretty happy with this. There are three exceptions.
- As many have noted, the light is pretty bright, even at it's lowest setting. Especially in a dark room.
- The touch screen is not very accurate.
- Every time I start it indexes books on the device. This usually takes 2-3 minutes. It's very annoying. It was annoying enough that I decided to use the firmware that Booxtor posted. The firmware is very similar. So far the only differences I've found are that the keyboard is different and the Booxtor firmware has access to all of the Android settings. (This is only through the settings app in the app drawer). I guess the advertised differences count too but I wasn't too concerned about them.
I generally end up heavily modifying my readers to make them the way I like them. That's not the case with this firmware. Both the Booxtor firmware and the Lynx firmware were the same regarding the following observations, with the exception of gmail.
- I like the Onyx Reader best of the four installed and have set it as my default for epub and pdf. I installed Moon+ Pro and it wasn't any better than the Onyx reader. The Onyx reader seemed crisper and since you can control the frontlight in the app while in Moon+ I couldn't (at least I couldn't see how to do so) it has an advantage.
- I didn't feel the need to install another launcher. I would gain nothing from it since I intend to us this as primarily a reader.
- I did install button savior which has proved helpful. I have the pro version which allows me to change the number and order of buttons and installed the HD theme. I use the PopControl which only works with the default theme or the theme pack. The default theme doesn't work so well on eink. PopControl allows me to launch up to nine apps from a popup menu.
- I did root it but that wasn't strictly necessary. I wanted to install quickboot which requires root. And Button Savior says that some of it's capabilities will be limited without root but I didn't find anything I needed to do that I couldn't without root.
- I installed some third party software which has enhanced my use of the program.
- Olive Tree Bible Study - Transitions between pages are disconcerting. Otherwise it works very well.
- Evernote - I really can't give you a good evaluation. The screen seems to be a little dim but I haven't tried note taking or looking for things in my notebooks.
- Rotation Control - Works pretty well. The Onyx Launcher will rotate but you gain nothing from that. In fact the Recent Reading: list is hidden. I do use this app to rotate the screen after I've launched the browser. That works well.
- Button Savior - see above.
- Quick Boot - Works fine so far.
- Gmail - Can't get Google Play services to install so Gmail won't run. I might try something like installing another browser whose homepage is gmail. I don't really need the Gmail app per se. Gmail worked fined on the original firmware.
- ES File Explorer - Works fine.
I wanted this reader so I could have most of my information available without carrying a tablet too. It's available on my phone if necessary but that's just not the same. Also, LED screens (like on phone, tablet, computer) tend to keep me from sleeping if I use them within 1-2 hours of going to bed. I'm hoping this helps in that arena.