Hi all,
I have a Kobo Mini which I always used with great pleasure. It's an awesome little device with great battery life that I bring and use wherever I go. Recently however I got a good deal on a Kobo Aura, which means I could give the Mini to my mom as her first e-reader. I gave it a factory reset (restore to initial settings from the menu), and that is when the problems started...
Even though I have always kept the firmware up-to-date (including this mandatory update in February 2019), the device would not complete the initial setup anymore. I tried from the device, using the desktop app, after another factory reset (with the little push-button in the back), but nothing worked. I contacted Kobo Support, but after a long discussion the only option they had for me was that I had to buy a new device.
At this point I remembered that I had a backup lying around of the internal SD card, which I then used to restore the device. Long story short: I fixed it and my mom is now happily using it.
But what I want to discuss with you is the following:
How could it be that Kobo (or Rakuten) gets away with this? The support desk literally told me:
Quote:
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When a device has some years, it is normal that after latest updates the device no longer works
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I understand that new features won't be supported anymore. It's also okay that cloud-features cannot be supported indefinitely. But completely bricking a device just because it's old?!? I'm sure Apple will have a huge problem if it does that with all Iphones that are officially out of support, and I also don't see it happening that all Tesla cars over a certain age won't be allowed to start anymore.
I am a strong opponent of planned obsolescence and mandatory cloud dependencies. Having to register with Kobo before you can start reading your own (legal) epubs is already an issue, but at least that is known before purchasing the device.
I'm curious to hear your opinions on this.
Best regards,
Lucas