Glo First impressions on the GLo

[RareBird]

Originally Posted by rainio

SameerH, in terms of progress indication I find what FBReader on android does is very useful. It uses a thin bar at the bottom of the screen with small lines as chapter indicators, so at a glance you know where you are in the book and chapter.


(Reducing the height of the bottom bar to increase screen-text real-estate would also be welcome.)

I know the Touch does this already in Kobo ePUBs. When you tap the center you'll see a thin line at the bottom with little ticks denoting the chapters. I assume that sharing firmware the Glo and Mini would be the same but maybe that's been eliminated in the newest firmware they have.

[Lunchtray]

Originally Posted by RobertJSawyer

Does the Kindle Glow have the option to turn justification off (like on the Kindle Touch)? Also, is my favourite font, Rockwell, still included? Thanks!

Same justification and font options as the Kobo Touch. Justification "Off, Left, Full Line"

Rockwell is not a default font on the Kobo Glo v 2.1.4 BUT you can add your own custom fonts if you like. They just won't have the font weight and sharpness options that the firmware fonts have.

[Latinandgreek]

Originally Posted by buffaloseven

Well I've had some time to play with it now, and a few more thoughts:

- This screen is fantastic. The text is super crisp and clean. Ghosting is practically non-existent, even when a full refresh is set to every 6 pages. The worst I've seen so far makes it look like you can sort of, just slightly see the text printed on "the other side of the page"

- The lighting is smooth and pretty even, from full brightness down to low. The only noticeable thing is the LED shadows at the bottom (which become more pronounced at lower brightness settings). I think this is a simple matter of physics, and without using more material (hiding screen extremities further into the bezel), I don't think it's something that's going to go away any time soon. That being said, it's easy to ignore it once you actually start reading and it's a minor inconvenience in an otherwise great implementation. Truthfully, the only reason it's so noticeable is simply because the rest of the screen is so evenly lit. I do wish that the display could be even a little more dim than it is now on it's lowest setting.

- I've had no problems with the firmware so far. Page turns are very quick, PDFs render excellently and CBR/CBZ files look great. Zooming in PDFs is about as smooth as you can expect it to be on a non-capacitive touch screen. Haven't experimented too much with PDFs, though, as essentially everything I'll read is ePub/CBZ.

- Tried putting two fonts onto the device. Created a "fonts" folder in the root and installed Regular/Italic/Bold/Bold Italic variants of Lato and a font I purchased for a few projects I worked on, FF Tisa Mobi Pro. Both showed up on the device and work flawlessly. As others have mentioned, TypeGenius is only for the preloaded fonts.

I'm very pleased with this as my first ebook reader, and based on what I've read about the KP, the KG seems to be a very strong competitor. The only advantage I can see Amazon having is the book selection, but that's a moot point if you don't live in the US, as their selection internationally is...lacking. The only other thing the Kindle has going for it is the ability to e-mail documents to your eReader. I'd love it if I could get a <myname>@kobo.com to e-mail ePubs to my device.

I think Kobo has a fantastic implementation of the front-light technology and I'm very pleased with the speed and responsiveness of the firmware. As my first e-reader, I'm very happy with it and would recommend it to others without hesitation. I'm optimistic with the future of the device, too. It's very encouraging to see Kobo representatives on this board answering questions and listening to feedback.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts with us. The KG looks like a great device. I am VERY tempted to pick one up, even though I REALLY don't need another ebook reader. I'm also curious to see what sort of cases Chapters has for it, I might be tempted to get one of their leather sleeves (the Roots sleeves).

[mdclements]

Originally Posted by Nilotikus

Had a good play with several PDFs now and it's definitely down to the PDF reader.

Basically you can zoom in and rotate PDFs and the responsive touch screen makes it really easy to move around the document. The problem is when you come to turn the page. If you're zoomed in (as you're likely to be on 99% of PDFs) you can't. You have to zoom out again before the next page then zoom in again to start reading. This is really painful, especially when compared to page turning on epubs which is easy, fast and a real joy.

It's a shame as it's seems like it's almost there for PDFs. If you could just just continue onto the next page by either continuing to drag or the normal page turns it would be fine.

Perhaps there are other PDF readers you can install? Though I've no idea where or how to do that.

When you get to the edge of the page we show a black gutter while zoomed in. If you tap on this gutter it will page forward (or backwards).

[RobertJSawyer]

Thank you, Lunchtray!

[Marbouk]

Originally Posted by elemenoP

Apologies if this has been asked and answered, I didn't see it. How does the screen look with the light OFF? Anyone have a previous ereader to compare it with?

Thanks,
eP

With the light off the screen is whiter looking than my kindle 3 keyboard and my wifes kindle touch.

[DouglasK]

For those who want to use the "Sleep Cover" function, I've got a quick hack:

Put a small rare earth magnet in your Kobo book style cover so that it's near the lower right corner of the screen. About 0.5cm from the bottom worked for me.

[bob123]

Is there a faster flip mode for page turns? On the cybooks if you hold the page turn button down, the pages turn really fast. Since the kobo does not have physical buttons, is there a way to do this?

[maxbookworm]

Another question: can you have it show you current page number vs total pages in book in the status bar? The video I saw had something like number of pages left in chapter, which doesn't really do much for me.

[soulfuldog]

Originally Posted by Lunchtray

There's the exact pic you're looking for 10 posts up from yours. It shows the same type of LED shadow halo that the Kindle Paperwhite has.

Thanks Lunchtray but I didn't think that image really showed it very clearly, the screen looks a bit strange in that photo?

[Lunchtray]

Originally Posted by l_macd

Thanks Lunchtray but I didn't think that image really showed it very clearly, the screen looks a bit strange in that photo?

The pic of the Kobo is probably the best representation of what the screen looks like in person. You can see the weird light shadow there at the bottom that's very much the same as the one in the Kindle PW pic you linked.

Pic's of the glowing for both devices will look strange depending on the camera exposure length and other such things.

[Droid]

Originally Posted by bob123

Is there a faster flip mode for page turns? On the cybooks if you hold the page turn button down, the pages turn really fast. Since the kobo does not have physical buttons, is there a way to do this?

Yes, you can use the icon that looks like two arrows <->
It lets you slide the bar to make navigation quicker.

[XrXca]

Originally Posted by maxbookworm

Another question: can you have it show you current page number vs total pages in book in the status bar? The video I saw had something like number of pages left in chapter, which doesn't really do much for me.

This appears to depend on the book source, all of my other sourced (ie: Project Gutenburg etc.) books show pages in the book, but those I've bought directly from Kobo show pages in chapter. Can't see any setting for this.

[filmo]

Someone stole your chrome home button!!

[XrXca]

Thoughts so far. 2 2/3 books read so far.
Kobo Glo fw 2.1.4

• Screen does have a different feel, not bad, just not as smooth as the touch, closer to real paper.
• Sensitivity seems a bit different from the touch, I have to be a bit more definite (touch the page a bit longer) with the glo.
• I generally have the touch lock about once every other book or so (power off and back on always clears it), but so far no lock ups with the glo.
• Light. GREAT, this is the one thing I've been missing on the touch, your not always in a well lit location, the light is very uniform with only a bit of shadow at the bottom, and the very top edge seems a bit brighter. (If you leave the bottom bar set to black in the settings, you may not notice the shadows).
• No Calibre support (yet, they are saying Fridays release should at least recognize it)
  And using the Connect to folder option in Calibre worked just fine.
• SD support worked well for me, but then I rarely had issues with the touch, and I rarely have more than 25 or so books on it at any one time.
• No home button seems odd, but one can certainly get used to the home icon on the top left.
• I know it's an Extra, but I wish the web browser was a) a bit faster responding, and b) had progress bars for downloading books (I have most my books on a calibre server.)
• There is a bit of weirdness as far as the wireless status display goes, it occasionally isn't displayed at all even though the wireless is on (haven't been able to duplicate the steps to get to that point yet)
• Wireless setup, finally (well I don't know if it was added to the touch in recent versions) but you don't HAVE to have a windows PC to set the thing up the first time.
• Battery life, who knows. I've read 2 1/2 book so far with the light on for 90% of that and WiFi enabled for some of it along with quite a bit of playing with settings etc, and am down to 67%, now I don't know if was fully charged when I finished the setup, it had 85% when it arrived and I plugged it in to do the setup then unplugged it as soon as the firmware update was done and finished the setup unplugged and started reading, never looked to see if it was fully charged. When I charge it next I'll pay more attention.

So far I'm happy with it, I just wish the new cover had shipped at the same time, without a cover it seems too small, and although it sort of fits in my touch cover, the touch was claimed minutes after I'd unpacked the glo, and they expect the cover to go with it...