Aura HD Tips and tricks for Android on Aura HD

[jshzh]

With the help from the community, I successfully installed Android on Aura HD (newest firmware -v 3.12.0) and thought I should share some lessons I had learned from the process so others may save some time if they decide to try.

1) The installation is pretty straight forward, just follow Angor's blog online. The patches are basically the same type as Koreader. The main problems you may encounter come from the OS and software on your computers. It may take you dozens of hours to "fix" them. For instance, I use Windows 7 and Firefox. An extension in Firefox locked the USB hubs - I couldn't safely eject it because some programs secretly monitored external drives. So Windows noticed that some files were in use. In this case, stop Firefox or use a free software called Unlocker to identify the spying software and stop it. When you do the partition and resizing, Windows may suddenly refuse to recognize your card, telling you it is an unidentified device, or your card may not show up at all. These issues may force you to read tons of online guides to solve them. You may need to uninstall all usb devices, reboot your PC. Or, assign a new label to your card. I am not going into details here because I actually can't say for sure which of the many methods did the trick for me. My point is: don't panic, it is very unlikely that your card is a bad one or needs to be formatted - as Windows may tell you. And, you may not have to face any problems at all. In that case, the whole installation only takes less than an hour, including transferring your old data.

2) You can use either the SD card slot on your computer or a usb card reader. It doesn't matter. Some say don't use your Kobo as a card reader. I didn't and don't know why.

3) After doing the partition, you may want to resize them if you have a card larger than 8G. The order of the partitions after the image is written looks like this: 30M unallocated/Kobo 32FAT/android data/android system/unallocated. As Angor said, first move data and system to the end of card in that order, now you get: 30M unallocated/Kobo 32FAT/unallocated as the first three. Extend Kobo 32FAT to the unallocated behind it - there are two options before and behind - choose to extend afterwards. The final arrangement is 30M unallocated/Kobo 32FAT/android data/android system. This is what I did because some guide says the first 30M unallocated space has to be there. I don't know why or if it is true. Since it is only 30M, I just left it there.

4) If you can't boot the android, it is most likely the partition of card is not right. Nothing serious. Just do it again. If both system can't boot, press the light button once, then use the power slide to boot Kobo system again. The light button may not be in the right position after you try to boot android. The Kobo system should still work.

5) After Android is installed, you will find in Koreader quite a few folders in the directory where your book folder used to be. I moved all your books to a folder called "books" as I didn't know if it would cause problems if I change the location of those folders. I still wanted to use my old reading history so I changed the path of the books in the history holder by changing the titles of history files.

6) Android works very well for my purpose: reading new articles/news on some favorites sites through Greader. As to setting android, Play Store may stop working for some reason. The methods I found online (clear google data, sign off goolge account, then sign in again) didn't work. I used apkhere.com in a web browser to download apps I needed: Mdict. There is a pre-installed es-explorer (?) to manage files. So you can install any compatible apks.

7) For best reading experience, I set the background to "black" and adjusted the font size. It is the same as night mode. The "dark" option is not dark enough to increase contrast. The dark background also eliminated "ghosting".

8) In Greader you can set how you want to sync articles. I selected all articles not only the feeds in reading mode without pictures. Downloading thousands of items may take 2-3 minutes but then you can disable Wifi to save battery. When you open an article by clicking the summery, it will be like reading a book chapter. Double-click will change the layout.

9) I installed Adfree app but it doesn't seem to work in greader when wifi is on. When wifi is off, there is no google ad - I am not sure if I should give credit to Adfree or simply because wifi is off. I use Crossbreeder on my phone (Android 2.3.7) which blocks all ads in any websites and apps. Is it safe to flash this app into the android on Aura HD? How to get to "recovery" to flash?

10) Two pictures here and here.


As far I am happy with the new adventure. I miss the convenience of KSM. I didn't install it because 1) not sure if I could handle the situation if it doesn't work as dual boot with android. 2) since I will probably use android to read news often, I will have to turn on and off the device. Plus I don't usually use nickle. Unless the android is within the menu, I lose the convenience of switching back and forth (between Koreader and Android) anyways.

If you know any add-blocking apps that fully works on the android ROM, please let me know. Thank you.

Enjoy.

Update: articles downloaded by android can also be accessed in Kobo and Koreader but without proper titles/file names and index to identify their sources and content :-(