Paperwhite Second Gen: First Impressions - Page 10

sparklemotion · 10-01-2013, 12:58 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jswinden

Just FYI, the PW2 is starting to show up in Best Buy stores in north Texas. Well, one store at least shows them to be in stock. I'm not sure how accurate the BB website is though. Yesterday they were reported to be in BB stores in the North Eastern USA. This is a nice change from last year when they didn't show up at local B&M stores for a few weeks after initial shipment.

Glad they are showing up near you! You can go and have a look in person. Are you still considering getting one if the screen looks good to you?

Katsunami · 10-01-2013, 01:04 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by booklover6

I took some pictures, but can't really tell anything from them. I can say the text on the PW2 is darker, the screen is lighter, and the USE_ALT_FONTS trick does NOT WORK!!!

Hm, bummer. Then, when porting features from the KPW2 to the KPW1, this trick may also become disabled on the KPW1. It seems Amazon really hates customization. (If you can call choosing between 6 fonts, of which at least three are useless, customization.)

booklover6 · 10-01-2013, 01:06 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Katsunami

Hm, bummer. Then, when porting features from the KPW2 to the KPW1, this trick may also become disabled on the KPW1. It seems Amazon really hates customization. (If you can call choosing between 6 fonts, of which at least three are useless, customization.)

And the font sizes, ugh! The last two are so flipping huge.

Outrager · 10-01-2013, 01:10 PM

Yay! Got my Paperwhite.

I took some photos of it in the dark with varying light settings.
I used a tripod with an okay camera with white balance set to what looks realistic to try to do it justice. They were RAW files converted to JPEG then cropped.

I took a few so I kind of forgot which is which, but this should be the correct order:

First is set to 20 or 22 brightness. Second set to 11 brightness. Third set to around 6-7 brightness. Fourth set to 5 brightness.

sparklemotion · 10-01-2013, 01:12 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by booklover6

and the USE_ALT_FONTS trick does NOT WORK!!!

Oh no, that is disappointing.

jswinden · 10-01-2013, 01:16 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by sparklemotion

Glad they are showing up near you! You can go and have a look in person. Are you still considering getting one if the screen looks good to you?

Yes, definitely! I'm waiting for you, xendula, and a few others who had issues with bad screens on the PW1 to give your reviews and impressions. Oh, and I'm waiting for payday--thank goodness I'm not a government employee!

sparklemotion · 10-01-2013, 01:22 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jswinden

Yes, definitely! I'm waiting for you, xendula, and a few others who had issues with bad screens on the PW1 to give your reviews and impressions. Oh, and I'm waiting for payday--thank goodness I'm not a government employee!

Sounds good! Mine should be there when I get home from work, although sometimes my UPS guy runs late. I'm sure today will be one of his late days. haha. Either way, I can't wait!

JoHunt · 10-01-2013, 01:23 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Outrager

Yay! Got my Paperwhite.

I took some photos of it in the dark with varying light settings.
I used a tripod with an okay camera with white balance set to what looks realistic to try to do it justice. They were RAW files converted to JPEG then cropped.

Thanks for posting these! The screen looks fabulous

Katsunami · 10-01-2013, 01:30 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by booklover6

And the font sizes, ugh! The last two are so flipping huge.

That is what I always found very strange.

Font size 1-4 are small incremental steps, but when going from 4 to 5, the font size makes a huge jump. Evertyhing starting from size 5 is useless for me, except when I'd be using a tiny custom font.

I really think that adding font options like the Kobo's have would have been *much* better additions to the KPW2 than adding "fluff" like vocabulary flipcards and Goodreads integration. Those are just nice to have for some people, while having more font options is useful for ALL people, as it directly impacts the reading experience.

This is one of the reasons I'm not considering to go from my (good) KPW1 to a KPW2. If they had added more font capabilities, I would definitely have upgraded. The fonts are the one thing I've never been satisfied with on my Kindle Touch or Paperwhite. Even my old Cybook Gen 3 had more font options (and an official way to add custom ones).

teralpar · 10-01-2013, 01:31 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by benjamin11900

I think reading black on "yellow" is easier on the eyes than reading on white.

But I could be wrong.

I agree. For me, it's easier to read using a sepia background than white background.

NiLuJe · 10-01-2013, 01:35 PM

To be fair on the USE_ALT_FONTS topic, it's a pretty good way to (soft) brick a device, so I'm not that surprised it went *poof*

.

sirmaru · 10-01-2013, 01:38 PM

The background is much whiter on the 2013 compared to the 2012 and the exact same fonts appear much crisper.

I used to have to sync to get eBooks to the latest page. Syncing is now automatic.

All dictionary lookups are stored in a Vocabulary Builder at the Home page.

The unit came fully charged and automatically registered itself at Amazon.

Collections had to be re-entered and did not automatically install.

Firmware comes at version 5.4.0 on the 2013 unit versus 5.3.8 on the 2012 unit.

Otherwise the units appear almost identical.

Katsunami · 10-01-2013, 01:43 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by NiLuJe

To be fair on the USE_ALT_FONTS topic, it's a pretty good way to (soft) brick a device, so I'm not that surprised it went *poof*

.

Huh... How would one softbrick a device by adding a a folder and some files?

The only thing I can think of is adding a really broken font that stops the Kindle from rebooting.

ixtab · 10-01-2013, 01:45 PM

(Topic: USE_ALT_FONTS)

Quote:

Originally Posted by sparklemotion

Oh no, that is disappointing.

No, it's only logical. It was a bug, not a feature. (at least from their point of view).

NiLuJe · 10-01-2013, 01:49 PM

@Katsunami: Which is exactly what I was thinking of, except you can replace 'broken' by 'random', because I've had perfectly valid (and simple) fonts make Amazon's FreeType crash/loop, basically badly mess up. Couple that with the "3 strikes and you're out" behavior of the boot process, and that makes for a shiny luminous paperweight in record time.

And then if you actually use a proper FreeType build from upstream's sources, it magically works without a hitch... So, yeah, not surprised they didn't bother to implement it in a saner way, and just killed it outright, because a wide release as is would be a mess to support.

10-01-2013, 01:10 PM	#139
Outrager Connoisseur Posts: 62 Karma: 12430 Join Date: Jun 2010 Device: Kindle Paperwhite 2013	Yay! Got my Paperwhite. I took some photos of it in the dark with varying light settings. I used a tripod with an okay camera with white balance set to what looks realistic to try to do it justice. They were RAW files converted to JPEG then cropped. I took a few so I kind of forgot which is which, but this should be the correct order: First is set to 20 or 22 brightness. Second set to 11 brightness. Third set to around 6-7 brightness. Fourth set to 5 brightness. Attached Thumbnails

10-01-2013, 01:49 PM	#150
NiLuJe BLAM! Posts: 13,506 Karma: 26047190 Join Date: Jun 2010 Location: Paris, France Device: Kindle 2i, 3g, 4, 5w, PW, PW2, PW5; Kobo H2O, Forma, Elipsa, Sage, C2E	@Katsunami: Which is exactly what I was thinking of, except you can replace 'broken' by 'random', because I've had perfectly valid (and simple) fonts make Amazon's FreeType crash/loop, basically badly mess up. Couple that with the "3 strikes and you're out" behavior of the boot process, and that makes for a shiny luminous paperweight in record time. And then if you actually use a proper FreeType build from upstream's sources, it magically works without a hitch... So, yeah, not surprised they didn't bother to implement it in a saner way, and just killed it outright, because a wide release as is would be a mess to support. Last edited by NiLuJe; 10-01-2013 at 01:53 PM.

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10-01-2013, 01:35 PM	#146
NiLuJe BLAM! Posts: 13,506 Karma: 26047190 Join Date: Jun 2010 Location: Paris, France Device: Kindle 2i, 3g, 4, 5w, PW, PW2, PW5; Kobo H2O, Forma, Elipsa, Sage, C2E	To be fair on the USE_ALT_FONTS topic, it's a pretty good way to (soft) brick a device, so I'm not that surprised it went poof .

10-01-2013, 01:38 PM	#147
sirmaru Wizard Posts: 2,426 Karma: 6561538 Join Date: Nov 2007 Device: Kindle PW 2013, HDX 2013, Galaxy S5 2014	The background is much whiter on the 2013 compared to the 2012 and the exact same fonts appear much crisper. I used to have to sync to get eBooks to the latest page. Syncing is now automatic. All dictionary lookups are stored in a Vocabulary Builder at the Home page. The unit came fully charged and automatically registered itself at Amazon. Collections had to be re-entered and did not automatically install. Firmware comes at version 5.4.0 on the 2013 unit versus 5.3.8 on the 2012 unit. Otherwise the units appear almost identical.