I have used a Kobo GLO HD for about 8 months. It came preset to sync automatically every evening.
About two weeks ago, I noticed that the battery charge was going down at an alarming rate. Actually, the Kobo was syncing continuously, thus emptying the battery in about 36 hours (this is very approximate), even though I was not reading. I assumed the syncing was the cause of the discharge.
I managed to find a way to stop it (though I do not recall how), but it did it again a few days later.
I wrote to Kobo help, who only told me to reinitialize, in various way to be tried in succession, which means that they did not have a clue. I just do not follow advice from people who do not have a clue.
Even if the reader seems to work properly after reinitialization (as it did as well when I stopped the syncing), I have no way to know whether I will not see the phenomenon again in the future, since it remains unexplained.
I decided that the simplest was to disable syncing, which has so far worked fine. However, the Kobo reader warned me (before it disabled syncing) that if I no longer sync, I will be be blocked by "offline reading limits", without further explanation.
But I was unable to find any document or information about these "offline reading limits", and the people who sold me the ereader never heard of it. Any info or link is welcome.
I am surprised that Kobo does not use its spying features to make itself useful by debugging problems on user devices.
- Is this issue of continuous syncing emptying the battery a known one ?
- Can I use my Kobo without syncing, or will I run into problems ?
I can always load my ebooks with Calibre, or even by writing directly in the ereader memory, except for those that have DRM (which I avoid buying, whenever I do not forget to check). But I can also sync explicitly when I need to.