interminable sync & battery drain

[franklekens]

My Kobo Forma generally works great. (& I have a new and increased appreciation for all of its features now that I'm acquainting myself with an Onyx Note 2; the bigger screen is interesting, but Kobo's reading features fare outstrip the Onyx device, IMHO. The device even feels relatively fast now -- while I thought it sluggish before!)

But one thing that I can't seem to get rid of is, is the interminable sync. It just won't complete its syncing.

It's not that it doesn't communicate with the store. If I buy a book or add it to my collection from Kobo Plus (usually on my desktop), as soon as I connect the Forma, the book is downloaded and I can read it. But the sync icon doesn't stop churning and i never seem to get the message 'sync completed' anymore.

And I do have to remember to switch off wifi every time I've downloaded a book, since apparently the device will otherwise start to try and sync spontaneously during the night or some such and drain my battery while doing so. Since it seems to be interminable.

Do Kobo still have no solution for this? Surely they could build in something that prevents this from happening?

[franklekens]

Okay, correction. I just tried again and this time the sync didn't take ages. It took about half an hour maybe. (Still far too long IMO.)

But the nightly battery drain I am still wary of, so I do keep switching off wifi. In my experience, this syncing is the single most source of energy depletion on the device. (The reading light comes second, naturally.)

[ps67]

You can fire off wi fii (and light it only when You really need it) and in settings - synchronization You can disable the automatic synchronization.

But about half an hour it is surely too much long, it should take a few minutes.

[stumped]

Originally Posted by ps67

You can fire off wi fii (and light it only when You really need it) and in settings - synchronization You can disable the automatic synchronization.

But about half an hour it is surely too much long, it should take a few minutes.

Bad WiFi maybe. Maybe process restarts rather than resuming after a WiFi dropout?
Or a DNS server issue, failing to locate kobo servers?
Just a guess. I have never had a slow sync
Q for OP, what is your WiFi speed and what DNS setting?

[Dr. Drib]

Originally Posted by franklekens

Okay, correction. I just tried again and this time the sync didn't take ages. It took about half an hour maybe. (Still far too long IMO.)

But the nightly battery drain I am still wary of, so I do keep switching off wifi. In my experience, this syncing is the single most source of energy depletion on the device. (The reading light comes second, naturally.)

I would check wifi one more time, in order to see if everything has 'caught up'. If the second one is much faster, then you're now OK.

Also, if the social aspect of Kobo is not important to you, then I would turn those things off. If not used, then why have them turned on? It just takes more time for those aspects to sync. -- Mine are all turned off.

[stumped]

I did not even know that logo had social aspect things !

Do they not understand that people buy readers to read, not to admire selfies or whatever... Or am I in a hopelessly luddite minority.

I confess to watching the docu movie " the social network " yesterday. I did not think that my opinion of Zuckerberg could go any lower, but it did.

[Dr. Drib]

Originally Posted by stumped

I did not even know that logo had social aspect things !

Do they not understand that people buy readers to read, not to admire selfies or whatever... Or am I in a hopelessly luddite minority.

I confess to watching the docu movie " the social network " yesterday. I did not think that my opinion of Zuckerberg could go any lower, but it did.

My correction: Not social aspects, but all that 'useless tracking' of reading habits, etc.

[davidfor]

There have been a few discussions on this recently. One thing I forgot in them is that there is something wrong with annotations syncing. My devices will frequently sit in the annotations syncing phase for a long time. This has been going on for a while. Syncing annotations between the devices and apps has been broken for a while.

Tapping the sync icon will show the progress of the sync. If you display that, you can see whether it gets stuck in one particular phase, or taking a long time for everything.

[franklekens]

Thank you. Tonight it was back to its "all night long syncing" again, draining the battery.

I'm trying now, but it just seems to be hanging on the first stage, 'checking updates'. Not the annotations paticularly.

[franklekens]

Yes, it's rather random. I was getting tired of it, switched wifi off. Then I switched it back on to to buy a book through the shop in the device. This went smoothly enough. Then I pressed "read now" (the only way to get it to download the book *immediately*, it seems), and that went smooth enough too.
And then it stayed at "updating books" for a while, and now it's been "downloading covers" for ever so long, &c. At least *something* is happening, I'll leave it switched on while on the charger. But it doesn't seem related to a lag in the annotations per se.

One weird thing: when I press "read now", I get the status bar for downloading the book, and it downloads fast enough. But then nothing happens, that window stays in place, the book doesn't open. I first have to choose 'cancel' there -- worried of course that this will cancel the download. But it doesn't cancel it, once it's completed. Now I can open the newly bought book.
Weird.

[issybird]

Originally Posted by franklekens

Thank you. Tonight it was back to its "all night long syncing" again, draining the battery.

I'm trying now, but it just seems to be hanging on the first stage, 'checking updates'. Not the annotations paticularly.

This has been happening with my Aura One, also. I thought I’d fixed it by signing out and then back in, but the fix didn’t last. It’s very frustrating. While I can download books from Kobo, I can’t get my OverDrive books. Nor can I just leave it on so my position is synced across devices, as the battery drains. I know it’s not my internet connection, as my other Kobos update readily and quickly (and they live farther away from my router, also).

Signing out was a nuisance as I had to go through my entire (quite large) Kobo library to redownload the Kobo books I currently want on my Aura. It would have been worth it if it had stayed fixed. Now, I’m wondering if the nuclear option, a factory reset, would fix it for all time. It would be worth it, once, Obviously not if it wouldn’t, but it means I have to give up reading my OD books on any of my Kobos, which is most annoying. I’d hold out for the next firmware update if that would trigger a fix, except for the Catch-22 aspect which is that it won’t download and install. I know I can sideload an update, but I shouldn’t have to. I’m an OTA updater.

I know it’s anecdotal, but it seems as if a significant number of people are experiencing this issue.

[4691mls]

Originally Posted by davidfor

There have been a few discussions on this recently. One thing I forgot in them is that there is something wrong with annotations syncing. My devices will frequently sit in the annotations syncing phase for a long time. This has been going on for a while. Syncing annotations between the devices and apps has been broken for a while.

Tapping the sync icon will show the progress of the sync. If you display that, you can see whether it gets stuck in one particular phase, or taking a long time for everything.

My Clara always takes longer with the annotations than any other part of the sync cycle but so far it's always been extra minutes, not hours (fingers crossed!)

[milady133]

I'm experiencing this too. First my Kobo Aura first edition was suffering it from time to time, and as since lock down wasn't using it much, I don't know when it exactly began to work properly again, but now my Kobo Forma is being experiencing it consistently for 3 weeks or a month, so I finally had to turn Wifi off, because the battery was drained over night and I had to do a quick charge before breakfast to avoid a sudden shutdown while reading during breakfast (I fall asleep while reading in bed, so I'm usually unable to leave it charging while I sleep).
It's annoying, but not so much as to open a ticket with Kobo and returning it to factory state and then side loading again all my books, so I'll leave it to others that ticket.

[franklekens]

I don't know how it is for others, but suddenly, out of the blue, as of this week at least, everything is fine again. Syncs don't take forever anymore. (Don't know about the overnight drain, because for the time being I keep wifi switched off regardless.)