Is Kobo ever going to fix the touchscreen and highlighting on the Aura One

[johnnyb]

Title is the question. What is Kobo’s track record on these matters?

[davidfor]

Sorry, I don't think the title is enough. You need to state what you think is wrong with these. I've seen a few complaints about touch. And related complaints about annotations. And some complaints about annotations that had nothing to do with the touch. And not all those complaints were bugs. Some were disagreements on how things should work.

As to their track record. They fix bugs. Some really quick. Some slowly.

And really, why are you asking? You've been around here long enough to have an idea of how Kobo works. You've complained enough about it in the past, so you should know. I suppose your trying to raise a point of some sort, in which case you should just come out and make it.

[johnnyb]

Ok, dear davidfor, my points:
1. Touchscreen is off, does not activate the area that is actually touched by the finger, which for me is especially annoying when highlighting larger portions of the text. Lifting the finger is sometimes a gamble because you might be missing a few words or a line.
2. Modifying the selection is also a gamble because if you do not guess the touch area of the locator correctly you risk cancelling the highlighting process (and have to tap the screen once more to be able to recommence).
3. Touchscreen is laggy: When highlighting across pages it automatically always selects the entire screen of text. That may be a design decision, although a poor one in my opinion. What’s worse: You really have to take your sweet time to track back to the part of the text that you actually want to highlight. If you move to fast (and sometimes, even if you move very slowly), you risk cancelling the selection operation and have to start all over again.
As to your argument for seniority: I have been around for some time and I still have no idea how Kobo works. They are like the Trump of E-reading (ok, maybe Apple is worse in that regard) in that you can never predict what they will or won’t do.
My points concern operability of basic functions not feature requests and still, they have been around at least since firmware 4.2.
I have already sent this list to Kobo when I received the Aura One I am currently owning a couple of months ago but haven’t heard (other that the “will forward to the bin” auto-reply) nor seen anything from them, which is why I am here asking if there is a chance that they will actually concern themselves with these problems.
Maybe, davidfor, you can work with this.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by johnnyb

Ok, dear davidfor, my points:
1. Touchscreen is off, does not activate the area that is actually touched by the finger, which for me is especially annoying when highlighting larger portions of the text. Lifting the finger is sometimes a gamble because you might be missing a few words or a line.
2. Modifying the selection is also a gamble because if you do not guess the touch area of the locator correctly you risk cancelling the highlighting process (and have to tap the screen once more to be able to recommence).

Aren't they the same problem? If the calibration of the touch is off, then it will affect both trying to select the starting word for a new highlight or trying to grab the handles when adjusting an existing highlight. And it will also affect the finishing the highlight as the position of your finger doesn't accurately show were you are on the page.

And this does highlight why I wanted you to state the problems. There have been plenty of complaints about the calibration of touch on the Aura ONE. But, it is usually from the point of view of trying to tap something and the thing next to it being tapped (icons in the menus have been mentioned). This obviously affects the highlighting process, but, it is not actually a problem with the highlighting process. It's a problem with the calibration of the touch screen. Fixing that should fix the highlighting. And reporting it as a highlighting problem potentially confuses the issue when people investigate it.

3. Touchscreen is laggy: When highlighting across pages it automatically always selects the entire screen of text. That may be a design decision, although a poor one in my opinion.

Yes, it is a design decision. I have no idea what else they can do. You swiped to the corner, it turned the page and now the finger is still in the corner. The highlighting engine then highlights up to where your finger is. If the highlighting stopped somewhere else, how do you get your finger to that location to continue the highlighting?

What’s worse: You really have to take your sweet time to track back to the part of the text that you actually want to highlight. If you move to fast (and sometimes, even if you move very slowly), you risk cancelling the selection operation and have to start all over again.

I don't think I've hit that issue, but I rarely highlight over pages. The lag when I do highlight larger bits of text can be bad, but usually I just wait a moment for it to catch up. I just don't lift my finger until what I want to highlight is shown as highlighted. Of course it would be nice if the performance was improved.

As to your argument for seniority: I have been around for some time and I still have no idea how Kobo works. They are like the Trump of E-reading (ok, maybe Apple is worse in that regard) in that you can never predict what they will or won’t do.

And with that you state pretty much what everyone knows. About the only thing I can say is that Kobo do react quickly when something happens that actually stop the devices from being used. They pull the firmware and fix it. For usability problems, it's slower.

My points concern operability of basic functions not feature requests and still, they have been around at least since firmware 4.2.
I have already sent this list to Kobo when I received the Aura One I am currently owning a couple of months ago but haven’t heard (other that the “will forward to the bin” auto-reply) nor seen anything from them, which is why I am here asking if there is a chance that they will actually concern themselves with these problems.
Maybe, davidfor, you can work with this.

Yes, I can. I know what problems you are talking about. I can always work with a detailed list of problems. Especially if they are problems I have to fix. Unfortunately, these aren't in my power to fix and I don't really have any workarounds to suggest. The only thing I can suggest is to follow up with Kobo to find out what they are doing about it. Or raise another problem but about the touch calibration. That's a lot easier to describe and understand and fixing it will flow on to fixing other problems.

[Quoth]

The iRiver Story Cover, (eInk) actually had a touch calibration function. Though it was resistive.
I think Kindle Touch, Kindle PaperWhite and many Kobo use IR light on the surface*, it's low resolution like capacitive, but really they need a calibration thing as it takes AGES to train oneself to touch at correct place. IMO the selected point should be slightly above centre of touch.
It seems poorly implemented on the Kindles and the Kobo H2O.

[*Because resistive or capacitive layers reduce the brightness of the reflected ambient light twice as much as LCD /OLED, which can be brighter than ambient easily]

[johnnyb]

Thanks, davidfor!
You are correct, 1 and 2 pertain to the same basic problem and only describe two different ways in which the phenomenon occurs. I listed them separately because a software modification could help alleviate the situation: Larger touch zones for the locators would tremendously improve the highlight correction process, so this would be a first workaround until the touchscreen driver has been fixed.
The problem I am facing as far as continuous highlighting is concerned on the Aura One is that not lifting the finger is not enough. Often when I move the finger too fast, the process is interrupted because the touchscreen itself does not seem to be able to catch up. This has nothing to do with the speed of eink and just betrays a general laziness in the driver code. Kobo apparently did not deem it necessary to have the touch layer react much faster than the eink screen. Yet this would be an important first step to more reliable devices.
As to the design decision regarding highlights across pages: The Kindle recognized sentences and stops highlighting at the end of the first sentence and will not move any further until the finger has reached up and has come close to the highlight. Really worth checking out, by far the best implementation on any eink device. It automatically prevents the type of unwanted behavior that the Kobo shows without the need to improve performance all that much (although of course this has always been an issue with Kobo readers, they are just not as snappy and the Kindles).
I guess the first thing Kobo really needs to do is drastically improve touchscreen precision and speed. Of course, when I tell them that, they are working on it

(@FrustratedReader: The Aura One touchscreen as well as those on the Aura, Paperwhite, Voyage and Oasis are capacitive. Yet on the Kobos those are, in my experience, even less precise than the IR one on the H2O)

[chrisridd]

Originally Posted by johnnyb

Ok, dear davidfor, my points:
1. Touchscreen is off, does not activate the area that is actually touched by the finger, which for me is especially annoying when highlighting larger portions of the text.

I see this too, and sometimes touching stops turning pages too. A full power off (not sleep) and on again always fixes things for me.

[johnnyb]

Originally Posted by chrisridd

I see this too, and sometimes touching stops turning pages too. A full power off (not sleep) and on again always fixes things for me.

That seems to be a different problem.
By “off” I meant that the touch screen is not properly calibrated and the area you touch is not the area you activate.