I sideloaded this new firmware onto my Touch 905B today, and so far it's been a very positive experience:
1) First and foremost, it appears to have resolved the constant lock-ups I was getting on my Touch under 3.16 (even on the Home page or in the Settings screens, even after full resets and re-initialisation). It had made me wonder if the hardware was on the way out, but I thought it was
probably f/w-related, because after a paperclip-reset my Settings (such as language, wi-fi, date/time and page numbering and refresh) would always be reset to defaults. Customer Care declined to help me troubleshoot it because the device is now out of warranty, even though the problems only occur under the 3.16 firmware that Kobo actually wrote for this device. (Is there any Touch that *is* still in warranty?!) So I did another factory reset (to 1.9.1), sideloaded 2.6.1, and then sideloaded 3.17.0 -- and today I have been through several books, some very formatting- and image-heavy, without a single lock-up. Touch wood.
2) I'm finding UI responses such as page turns significantly faster than under 3.16. Selecting a word/phrase, for highlighting or dictionary check, seems to be somewhat slower.
3) The buglet that saw last lines in a chapter file being pushed over to a new screen *appears* to have been resolved. (Huzzah!) At least, it's not happening now for me on the books I checked. (If it makes a difference, I edit my epubs to set Widows/Orphans to zero.)
So far, this release seems like an improvement.
