Kobo future firmware feature request thread

[Francois_C]

As new firmwares are getting more and more "closed" in order to imitate the Kindle proprietary business model, I think there is no future for this feature. Maybe the only hope would be to purchase an e-reader which does not depend upon a bookshop. But there are few of this sort, because e-readers are more and more considered like printers: a printer is a tool that helps selling overpriced ink cartridges, then dies of programmed obsolescence after three years.

I even reverted my Kobo Touch to firmware 2.4 because new versions no longer read the SD card at start. Though this was very handy: when I had to reset because of one of the innumerable Kobo bugs, I removed the card before, re-installed the firmware, then had the Kobo parse the memory card.

Things that are basic to you are not basic to them. Only money, more and more money, lots of money is basic to them. they don't care about culture...

Originally Posted by canpolat

I have quite some non-DRM books and I would really like a feature that would allow me to synchronize a folder of non-DRM books with Kobo Aura over Wi-Fi. Is it already possible? Am I missing something? Because this looks quite basic to me.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by Francois_C

As new firmwares are getting more and more "closed" in order to imitate the Kindle proprietary business model, I think there is no future for this feature.

Can you point to the proof? I am on the current firmware and have made no change in my book buying or reading habits. I do buy from Kobo a they tend to be cheapest (with the promo codes) and convenient, but a lot more books come from other sources and are sideloaded with no problem.

But, I do agree that Kobo is unlikely to implement the feature mentioned. You are right, it doesn't fit into Kobo's strategy for the business and the device. The effect can be achieved by sideloading using the USB cable, so Kobo are not really blocking anything, just picking where they are devoting their resources. And personally, I can think of better ways to improve the device.

[filmo]

I really like new feature that lets me turn off list view display covers in library.

Home screen should also have author and title captions with turn off display covers option.

Ability to turn off home screen % read would be good because this can be wildly wrong for many reasons.

[Merudo]

Originally Posted by samhy

From what I've seen, it seems to me that the books are displayed by languages. For example, when searching for an author I'll see first the French books, then say the Spanish ones, then the Italian ones... It's cumbersome but they're there, with room for improvement

It may work if you search by typing the author or the book title. However, if you want to browser the "Historical Fiction" section, it won't work and you will only see english books, regardless of the setting.

[paola]

Originally Posted by Merudo

It seems to be that Kobo for some reason didn't enable our reader to browser new books to buy in a different language. This is extremely disappointing and makes it next to impossible to buy books from the reader in our language.

My dad is considering returning the device because this crucial feature is missing. Please fix it as soon as possible! The fix should be simple - the website already allows to pick among 8 languages to browser books in.

what language does your dad read in? I wonder whether changing the "affiliate" might help (e.g. Mondadori should give you books in Italian by default, FNAC in French, and so on).

[samhy]

Originally Posted by Merudo

It may work if you search by typing the author or the book title. However, if you want to browser the "Historical Fiction" section, it won't work and you will only see english books, regardless of the setting.

You're right. I didn't think of that. It's so unnatural to search the bookstore on the device that I only do that when I know the exact title or author. Otherwise, I use a computer

[meeera]

Originally Posted by fil9998

long press on a world or phrase in a ebook could search in dichionary, google (on line) and wikipedia (on line)

I second this enhancement request: the way I'd like it done is that if there is no result in the dictionary search, it should go automatically to a wikipedia search (or possibly to either wikipedia or a search engine, depending on a user-set preference).

[Francois_C]

Originally Posted by davidfor

Can you point to the proof?

Yes. First, if you never buy books from Kobo, which I took the habit of doing because (at least French ones) the first ebooks were so bad in 2011, you were able to put your books only on the memory card till version 2.5. This was a very handy feature: if you had to reset the device, you removed the card first, and books were parsed again when you restarted with the card in.
Since version 2.6, the card is no longer checked at start. You have to plug it again, books are badly parsed only when you plug the SD card and several plug/unplug cycles cause the card data to be damaged or Kobo database to be altered.
Second, you have no choice of updating the firmware or not. I connected my Kobo to Kobo desktop after reverting to 2.4.0, only in order to activate my Kobo again. But the update began immediately, without letting me the ability of disconnecting my device before. So I decided to use the Linux validation with sqlite3.
Third, this misadventure made me experience the last firmware for some minutes. The display of the homepage was bad (text not centered at bottom, at least in French). Several new features were introduced, links to things that are useless to me and no longer to my recent readings. I could not find any way to disable those stupid Reading Life features, I feared Facebook would invade my private life. Not to speak about Google Analytics which is always running and sending my reading statistics to Big Brother Google.
I want to read independently for myself, not to be a zombie manipulated by the capitalistic system.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by Francois_C

Yes. First, if you never buy books from Kobo, which I took the habit of doing because (at least French ones) the first ebooks were so bad in 2011, you were able to put your books only on the memory card till version 2.5. This was a very handy feature: if you had to reset the device, you removed the card first, and books were parsed again when you restarted with the card in.
Since version 2.6, the card is no longer checked at start. You have to plug it again, books are badly parsed only when you plug the SD card and several plug/unplug cycles cause the card data to be damaged or Kobo database to be altered.

That only affects the Touch. The Glo, Aura and Aura HD will all recognise the SD card when turning on. So, it's a bug, not Kobo trying to force you to buy books.

As to issues when ejecting the card, after two years with the Touch and a year with the Glo, I haven't seen this problem. And this is probably not as big an issue with the current firmware. Now, when the SD card is removed, all the books are not removed from the database. When the card is inserted again, the books on the card are compared with the database. Missing books are removed, new books added and changed books are removed and added as new. This seems to work well as I have ejected and inserted cards with about a 1000 books on them into both my Glo and Touch many times without any problems.

Second, you have no choice of updating the firmware or not. I connected my Kobo to Kobo desktop after reverting to 2.4.0, only in order to activate my Kobo again. But the update began immediately, without letting me the ability of disconnecting my device before. So I decided to use the Linux validation with sqlite3.

Yes, Kobo do not give you a choice about upgrading the firmware if you connect to the desktop app. It's rude, but I can understand their desire to only have to support one version of firmware. From my experience, needing to support multiple versions of software is an expensive thing to do.

But, I can't work out why you did that. If you want to downgrade the firmware, you should do a factory reset first. If you don't you will probably have problems. After the factory reset, you connect, let the Kobo desktop do its stuff including copying the new firmware files to the device. Then you remove the firmware files the desktop app put there and put the firmware files you want to use onto the device. This has been discussed many times here.

Third, this misadventure made me experience the last firmware for some minutes. The display of the homepage was bad (text not centered at bottom, at least in French).

Yes the menu at the bottom is left justified. Sort of like the menu that is at the top of any window in a current PC operating system.

Several new features were introduced, links to things that are useless to me

What links? The bottom menu is "Library", "Bookstore" and "Extras". Pretty much the same as for 2.4.0. If you are talking about the tiles, they change as you use the device. The things you use will will replace the defaults that Kobo display very quickly.

and no longer to my recent readings.

Yes, the tiled home screen is new and shows Kobo's defaults when first displayed. But, did you actually use it? Open a book and return to the home screen and guess what is in the top left. Open another book and return and guess what will be the first two tiles. Right now, I have five books, the web browser, a link to the library and the reading stats as the tiles. I can remove any of them whenever I want to. And strangely enough, Kobo have done this in such a way that I can easily fiddle with the database and prevent any tiles I don't want to see from appearing.

I could not find any way to disable those stupid Reading Life features,

It is at the bottom of the "Reading settings" page.

I feared Facebook would invade my private life. Not to speak about Google Analytics which is always running and sending my reading statistics to Big Brother Google.

How have these changed since 2.4.0? Actually, I'm pretty sure the Facebook thing has: there are less Facebook options in 3.1.1 than there were in 2.4.0. But, I don't have a Facebook account. This hasn't affected my use of the firmware at any version.

And for Google analytics, there is discussion here on the how to disable this from December 2011. That's a long time before 2.4.0 was released. I haven't seen anything more recent that suggests there has been a change since.

I want to read independently for myself, not to be a zombie manipulated by the capitalistic system.

In that case, turn the WiFi off. NOTHING will be reported anywhere. And as you are only reading sideloaded books, you don't need it.

[hreader]

I had to upgrade so my kobo has now a 3.1.1 fw from 2.6.1 and...

Originally Posted by hreader

... I really miss the dictionary in dictionary feature maybe because, as you can read, my English is not so good... Sometime I need to know the mean of a word in the definition of another word and, at the moment it's annoying. I tried a kindle touch of a friend and when you select a word in a pop-up definition, it open the dictionary at that word and again if you touch a word... I think that we need something similar

is fixed; good job!

When was that change made? Why kobo doesn't publish a release note is a mistery, I hope they will start soon.

[rantoie]

Any idea when there will be a new firmware upgrade for the Aura (HD)?

[louisgag]

I enjoy the Kobo Touch alot and have a suggested feature:

ability to remember the login info in the browser; it would save alot of time when connecting to a public hotspot which requires autenthification.

[ksiflhjla8]

PDF again:

Please fix the bounding boxes, many PDFs have edges cut off

[DrAtomic]

-. Ability to sync wishlist to kobo store
-. Ability to organise wishlist (i.e. create multiple lists)
-. Ability to checkout an entire wishlist (buy all)
-. Show prices in wishlist
-. Ability to send wishlist to pocket
-. Language filter on storefront search (i.e. if I search for Dan Brown I'm interested in his books in English not in Dutch or Italian.)
-. Storefront language content should match the set language of the device (again I dont care for Dutch books, I want English books).
-. On the Dutch website (kobobooks.nl) itself it is impossible to find the english ebooks (if you search Dan Brown and then click english to the left it gives about 7000 results, fellatio techniques being the first one lmao, but no Dan Brown the author)
-. Can we pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaase get ideal integration (your devices have a browser, should work fine), why in the world are you forcing me to pay by creditcard when your site redirects me to kobobooks.com (english books). You want me to take my business elsewhere?

[Francois_C]

Originally Posted by davidfor

That only affects the Touch. The Glo, Aura and Aura HD will all recognise the SD card when turning on. So, it's a bug, not Kobo trying to force you to buy books.

I used to think this was a bug, but it was repeated in so many versions that I wondered whether Kobo developers were complete incapables or they did it intentionally (they succeeded in creating the same bug in several manners!)

"Too expensive, no alternative": this is the perennial plea of all supporters of wild capitalism.

I don't ask for my 2.4.0 firmware to be supported (by guys who were found unable to fix a bug for nine months! thank you, I prefer supporting me by myself!), I ask to be allowed to keep using it, without any warranty from Kobo. We are living in free countries: I ask for freedom.