Aura ONE Kobo Aura One owners thread

[rogerinnyc]

Received my Aura One two days ago, already owning a Kindle Voyage and a Kobo H2O. Short assessment: I love it! I'll fill in more details later, but the look and feel is wonderful, and I love the size. Folks are comparing screen quality. My humble opinion is that nothing beats the Voyage for contrast and sharp text. But I'm not reading the A1 next to it. The A1 looks more like a printed page than either the Voyage or the H2O, both of which (again, IMHO) have an electronic, slightly tablet-y view to them. Yes, the A1 is slightly grayer than the H2O, but it is also much brighter, and the text is very sharp -- albeit lower contrast, I think, than the H2O. So this gets very much into the realm of personal preference. To me, it looks more like a printed page than either the Voyage or the H2O.

In addition, I love the waterproofing (without the port cover), the larger size, the flush bezel, the Pocket synching, the GeoffR patches, the choice of fonts and fine control over font size, line spacing and margins. And the new twilight light adjustments, to get rid of the blue light, really is surprisingly nice and useful.

Downsides? I wish I could download issues of the NYTimes when I go outside. Because of Apprentice Alf, I don't particularly care about ecosystems, but Kobo's lack of periodical support is a negative. On the other hand, I have found that Pocket works significantly better than Push to Kindle for articles, so that's score one for the Kobo system. And the new OverDrive support is pretty cool. Ergonomically, it's a bit of an adjustment (for me) for one-handed use, because of the size and the narrow bezels. In truth, I think both the H2O and, certainly, the Voyage, are easier to hold in one hand, but again, that's not slowing down my appreciation for the A1.

In sum, if you have the disposable income, I would get the A1. If you already have the H2O, it's not really an upgrade save for the flush bezel, the larger size and the non-blue light adjustment, so you have to assess for yourself whether that's worth $200 plus. The Voyage is way more portable and is unmatched in screen quality and text contrast, but for all of the above reasons it's not presently going to be my reader of choice at home.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

The chapter progress graph, reading time, reading time for the next chapter and total book reading time do NOT work when using EPUBs. The icon is gone. The only thing you can get is a progress by page number by opening the Table of Contents icon in the bottom menu. The extra functionality only works when using KEPUB, regardless of using full screen mode or not.

The way you state that makes it sound like but. It isn't. Kobo have made the decision to support in-book stats in only in kepubs. That is not a bug.

Why Kobo have made this decision, I don't know. It will at least partly be because they want something to distinguish between the two formats. But, it could also be because they can't do it for epubs. For epubs, the Adobe RMSDK is used for rendering. It is likely that the RMSDK doesn't support the features that are needed for the stats.

[anacreon]

Originally Posted by Poppaea

ePub? What is ePub??? �� Haven't used it since 2013.

It is slow doing stuff,you know, like search in a book or rendering book covers when I page through collections. And I only have 73.

I use only kepubs (and PDFs for those unconvertible books that at long are readable thanks to the extra inch), and searching in kepubs is amazingly quick, even in very big books.

But speaking of slow, I have two problems with the One which I didn't have with the Glo HD or the H2O:
* calling the collections is much slower, even after eliminating those collections with a high number of books, and regrouping some of those with a very low number - I'm speaking 10" instead of 5" which is already high.
* when paging through collections it is VERY slow in rendering book covers for the first time after download, which is most of the time since I've had this replacement One only 6 days, even though they mostly are kepubs. I never had this problem with either H2O or the Glo HD even when loading or reloading 2000+ books.

[allovertheglobe]

Not sure if this is the best thread, just catching up, but since it's definitely concerning the KA1 and the pool of fellow users is still small, I figure this one should be OK.

I have a weird and very basic issue: my KA1 does not seem to be able to RE-connect to HIDDEN WiFi networks.

I'm on 4.0.7523, as installed automatically OTA after the initial setup. I add a network through "Join a WiFi network" => "Add network", it works fine. After a while WiFi will disconnect (or when I put the KA1 to sleep), next time I turn it on, it's not able to reconnect, it ends up showing the basic scanned/visible networks window. The only way to reconnect to the same hidden network is to re-enter all the info which gets annoying fast. I tried a couple of different locations (home & office), same result.

At the same time, all other devices reconnect just fine every time, including my good old Kobo Aura HD (firmware 3.19.5761, latest OTA)...

The weird thing is when I go to Settings => WiFi connection => Edit WiFi networks they are all stored correctly! It just does not seem to be able to find them and use the info to connect? I tried turning WiFi off & on again, rebooting the device... I haven't tried a factory reset since I just got it and haven't really done anything yet anyway.

Has anybody else experienced this?

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by davidfor

The way you state that makes it sound like but it isn't. Kobo have made the decision to support in-book stats in only in kepubs. That is not a bug.

Oops; I see how my way of wording it can make you think this is a bug. Indeed, it isn't. No reading time and such (and the disappearing icon) are Kobo's deliberate choices.

[Poppaea]

Originally Posted by jiminrussell

Poppaea, did you put the PeriodicAutoSync=false under [ApplicationPreferences] of the kobo ereader.conf file? It won't work if you don't have it in that section of the file.

Yes, I did. Directly behind the bracket. And I used TextEditor and saved my changes. Twice. Yesterday and again this morning.

Battery drained overnight, from being full when I went to bed and read for about an hour and a half to 8% this morning in standby. I don't mind charging a reader every couple of days but this is ridiculous. And I don't understand why the changes in the conf. or the firmware update don't work. This is like mine is wronger than wrong when both fail to mend it.

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by Poppaea

Yes, I did. Directly behind the bracket.

That is possibly the problem. If you do this:

[SectionName]Option=false

then it may not work.

Try this:

[SectionName]
Option=false

(I don't know the exact section name and option name on top of my head.)

[Katsunami]

This article says that the Aura ONE has 50 fonts, and 11 font sizes.

I haven't counted, but I think I have more than 11 font szies within the slider, but I don't think I can choose from 50 fonts... or am I missing something?

[emilov]

They probably switched the numbers, it's 11 fonts and 50 sizes (but who's counting).

[Katsunami]

I've thought about that too, but I don't know on top of my head if I have 11 fonts available. It could be. There could actually be 50 sizes; the steps are small, compared to the jumps the Kindle makes.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

I've thought about that too, but I don't know on top of my head if I have 11 fonts available. It could be. There could actually be 50 sizes; the steps are small, compared to the jumps the Kindle makes.

The specs on the product page says 11 fonts and 50 sizes.

[John F]

Originally Posted by davidfor

The way you state that makes it sound like but. It isn't. Kobo have made the decision to support in-book stats in only in kepubs. That is not a bug.

Why Kobo have made this decision, I don't know. It will at least partly be because they want something to distinguish between the two formats. But, it could also be because they can't do it for epubs. For epubs, the Adobe RMSDK is used for rendering. It is likely that the RMSDK doesn't support the features that are needed for the stats.

I have my doubts that RMDSK is the reason (as in it can't be done). At one point, for epubs, they had a progress bar at the bottom of the screen (as I recall).

Look at it this way: they can go to the first page of any "chapter"; so from there, they should be able do all the calculations.

[jackie_w]

Re: number of font-sizes, this is an extract from GeoffR's patches file:

##  AuraOne:    18px - 194px (55 sizes)
##  GloHD:      14px - 150px (48 sizes)
##  AuraHD/H2O: 12px - 150px (50 sizes)
##  Glo/Aura:   12px - 122px (43 sizes)
##  Touch/Mini: 12px - 90px  (35 sizes)

I presume he read these from the firmware code.

As for built-in font faces I only see 10 unless there's a new one added specially for the Aura One (mine hasn't arrived yet but that's another story).
Amasis
Avenir Next
Caecilia
Georgia
Gill Sans
Kobo Nickel
Malabar
Kobo Tsukushi Mincho
Kobo UD Kakugo
OpenDyslexic

There also used to be a second dyslexic font, called Dyslexia, at one time but that was removed a few firmwares ago. So maybe the '11 fonts' is just out of date.

[Katsunami]

On top of my head, that seems about right. So, they indeed switched the numbers, and 11 fonts is just out of date. The best font out of the bunch (for me) is Georgia, and I set the text size and thickness to what would be considered normal for a paperback.

[emilov]

Originally Posted by Poppaea

BTW, the shop I ended up ordering from still has some left (they had 92 when I ordered and are down to 8 units right now), so if anyone in Germany wants to order from them, they are fast and very good. Shipping notice with tracking number and all.

Ordered there yesterday and received it today, fantastic!

Some experiences so far (coming from Kindle PW2):
- first time kobo user (Kindle3 and PW2 so far)
- I'll spare you the comparison photos, no matter how I make them they won't do the screen justice (the PW2 now looks like a toy next to the KA1).
- the KA1 screen _looked_ grayer at first but then after initial, what, "warm up?" or something it's on par with the PW2 in terms of contrast. I know, weird but that's how I saw it.
- the sqilite hack didn't work because the table has more columns now, a blob, even. I copied the existing line and changed most of the stuff in there but after creating another line the reader errored out. I went with wifi reg instead and signed up a fake account which I'll never use.
- calibre for everything (most of my stuff is mobi/azw3, all nicely dedrm'd)
- kepub vs epub: definitely kepub. Much faster page turns (again, about as fast as the PW2), epub was much slower. All I care about is percentage in the book, this time to finish stuff was never close to spot on for me.
- enabled full screen, prevented autosync and google analytics
- yes, full screen == no progress bar but a middle tap shows that info, that's enough for me
- patched its brains out (@GeoffR, you are the frikking MAN!), very easy. Went conservatively and enabled just a few patches so far (the kepub fixes for full screen were important to me). Now all I see on the screen is text, top to bottom, left to right with almost zero margins in any direction - perfect!
- added a few fonts (I'm used to Amazon's Bookerly)
- can't say much about battery life yet
- as others said, the auto-light is too twitchy
- usability: all I ever read is epub/mobi, text only, so what I use 99.9% of the time is next page (tap) and dictionary now and then. Both of these work just fine.
- a screen this size begs for a two column view in portrait mode, nickel doesn't have it and I know koreader does. I'll try that at some point.
- still gotta sort out hyphenation

Now I have it as I want it, in all of its full-7.8"-screeny glory. I'll do some actual reading this evening (maybe pick a new font).