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Originally Posted by stangri
To me this sounds like a silly concern considering how much other information is collected by various domestic and foreign actors from your mobile devices.
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Actually, there are three silly concerns here:
1. I am seldom on-line with my phone. For making actual phonecalls I still hang on an ancient Nokia that can make and receive calls and send/receive SMS. That is it. It needs to be charged less than once a week and is small enough to be worn on my belt in a luxurious custom-made leather pouch. I will have to start using other device to make calls and it will most probably be the Yotaphone. I still do not plan to purchase a data plan for it. So when I am outside of a [free or my own] WiFi range I am offline and I like it that way. So the app HAS to work offline so that I can start reading a new book when I am on holiday or somewhere outside immediate WiFi access.
2. I do not like the fact that somebody collects data about me. I am not paranoid, but when I have a choice I prefer to stay under the radar. I register each of my Android devices under different name, for example, not used for any other purpose.
3. I often read side-loaded books and I would really prefer not to upload the files on a server that is not under my control. There have been so many *massive* data breaches and thefts recently and so many shocking security holes came to the light recently that I wish to minimize my presence whenever I can without being too paranoid.
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Originally Posted by stangri
1. Price for the original one with support for domestic LTE networks. AFAIK the "clone" ones do not support the same bands as the original.
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I personally do not care for LTE. I have never been connected on-line using an cellular network on my phone and I do not plan in a foreseeable future.
I have the ability to connect in an emergency, using 3G and pay-as-you-go connection - that connection has a very reasonable cost and is capped to about 50 Euro Cents per 24 hour period. I have never been in an emergency where I needed to activate the service to read an urgent work-related email or look up a train time-table or something.
There are NO YotaPhone clones.
There are just two models - 206 and 201.
I think that 206 is with Chinese LTE bands and 201 is with European ones. 201 was slightly more expensive last time I looked.
YotaPhone 206 costs about 110Euro at the moment. That would be a great price for such a high-end phone even if it did not have the gorgeous e-ink on the back. I could just get one on a whim as a toy and an on-the-move reader and a possible replacement for my trusty ancient Nokia dumbphone.
Quote:
Originally Posted by stangri
2. The e-ink screen is small for a full-time reader and like you pointed out, no backlight on it.
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Yes. But as a device you carry in your coat pocket so that you can read 10 minutes here and 20 minutes there, plus make photos, look up time-tables and have an Android media device it is fantastic.
As my main reader I use a 6" Android e-ink reader with frontlight.
Quote:
Originally Posted by stangri
3. Long-term updates/support if it was used as a primary mobile device. I'm more concerned about updates patching known bugs/exploits than the big brother snooping on me
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I got it with Android 4.4, I think. I have downloaded an update and took a windows PC out of mothballs to update it to higher system, because 4.4 can't be updated Over The Air.
At the moment it has Android 5.0 and there is public 6.0 beta being tested by Russian developers. There is a thread on the XDA-developers forum with many betatesters reporting. You can even side-load the beta at the moment if you like living on the edge. I am happy with my 5.0 at the moment. My demands are modest - the main one is being able to display a book on a front and back display in a reasonable manner.
PLEASE NOTE: an app in a default mode doesn't display text in a satisfactory mode. There is a fast 1bit graphics mode and 16shades of grey mode, plus various levels of refresh and anti-aliasing. I have been playing with the settings and I still haven't found a setting I would be happy with for other installed reading apps, such as CoolReader or AlReader. I wanted to see Play Books, because it is installed by default and I thought it might have better settings for e-ink that I could copy to other apps.
At the moment I am using YotaReader that has reasonable defaults (and *very* few configurable options). But it displays fonts on the e-ink side very well.
I was curious and wanted to see formatting options and the quality of the text on the e-ink side in a Play Books app. Is there a way to display book without uploading it first?
Is there a way to start reading a new, side-loaded book while I am off-line on Play Books?