New "Mars" device from Likebook?

[fduniho]

I got the update files from the seller yesterday, and I upgraded my Likebook Mars to be able to use Google Play late last night. Unfortunately, the Nook app still did not work, and some of the apps I want to run are not available through Google Play. So, when I get around to it, I'll install the Goodereader app store and another app store.

[fduniho]

I installed Goodereader App Store, then installed the Aptoide app store, which I used to install Hacker's Keyboard and Manga Reader 1.282 from donabenta. I also installed reddit is fun, Free Dictionary Org, Android Assistant, Palmary Weather, CPU-Z Hardware Info, CPU X, RealCalc (paid version), Photon Browser, Moon+Reader, Push to Kindle, Kobo Books, Smart Rotate, Spotify, CrunchyRoll Manga, Firefox, FlashFox, and Amazon Kindle. I will be trying out Moon+Reader with a free EPUB I picked up. What apps are the rest of you using or recommend for the Likebook Mars?

[franzli]

Originally Posted by fduniho

I installed Goodereader App Store, then installed the Aptoide app store, which I used to install Hacker's Keyboard and Manga Reader 1.282 from donabenta. I also installed reddit is fun, Free Dictionary Org, Android Assistant, Palmary Weather, CPU-Z Hardware Info, CPU X, RealCalc (paid version), Photon Browser, Moon+Reader, Push to Kindle, Kobo Books, Smart Rotate, Spotify, CrunchyRoll Manga, Firefox, FlashFox, and Amazon Kindle. I will be trying out Moon+Reader with a free EPUB I picked up. What apps are the rest of you using or recommend for the Likebook Mars?

I've been using MoonReader and Librera for reading, with a slight preference for the latter maybe. bVNC for using the device as monitor, although I haven't been able to find time to look into this more yet. I'd also like to use Linux Deploy and XSDL X-server for running Linux directly on the device, but annoyingly no attempt at rooting has been successful thus far.

Lack of root and of usable multitasking are my main gripes with the device.

[franzli]

Originally Posted by fduniho

I already complained about not being able to multitask, and I learned that in power management, all apps are set to be killed when another app starts running. You can make exceptions in power management for apps you want to run in the background of other apps.

Yes, I read that discussion earlier in the thread. I've set exceptions for most of my apps, but that still does not seem to enable me to switch between them, neither using the Recents button in Button Savior nor using Alt+Tab with a Bluetooth keyboard. Both do exactly nothing. So it might be that these exceptions at least allow the apps to keep running in the background, which is a first step, but without the ability to actually switch back to them with two key presses, that doesn't actually solve my problem.

So far, if, say, I'm reading something in Librera and want to look up something on a website, I need to tap Home, wait till the homescreen shows up (which takes surprisingly long, not sure if that's specific to RelaunchX), go the the app drawer, find my browser (eg Naked Browser) and launch it from there. To go back to reading, the same procedure.

[welcomyou]

Originally Posted by welcomyou

How is the battery? My Likebook Mars consumes about 5% per hour (idle, no wifi, no reading, but not sleeping, just always show home page)

I think there's a problem with bluetooth. When I enable bluetooth, battery decrease about 5-6%/hour. When I disable bluetooth, ~0%/hour

[psychowood]

Originally Posted by franzli

Lack [...] of usable multitasking are my main gripes with the device.

Have you tried changing background activities settings in the developer options?

[nadiia]

Can someone try installing Safari Queue app and check if it's working on Likebook Mars?
https://play.google.com/store/apps/d...fariflow.queue

thank you all!!

[fduniho]

Originally Posted by nadiia

Can someone try installing Safari Queue app and check if it's working on Likebook Mars?

I'm not signed up for it, but I get at least as far as being asked to sign in.

[notimp]

There are so many things wrong with this eReader, especially the built in reading app, that I am amazed, that no one touched on any of them yet.

The Likebook mars is an amazing ereader in regards to the hardware thats provided, but as of now its completely unusable for the western customer. I write this in the shallow hope, that someone in the product team will read this, and they will address the most pressing issues.

Reading app:

- entirely can't handle soft hyphens. The end. Text will be displayed broken. Thats a don't buy/throw this in the bin right now issue right there. If you buy an ebook from somewhere and it features soft hyphens - this ereader can't handle it. Again - the end.

- entirely neglects epub or azw3 formating, does its own thing, segments paragraphs with a non defeatable newline, sets undefeatable indents - where are we? If you want to play "we know better than the ebook creator", let me tell you one thing - you are no apple., may I insist, that you adhere to standards, because - thats what they are there for. Ever heard of html? ePub 2 maybe? No. The end.

I also understand that no youtuber usually has the mental capacity to even mention it - but we are here at mobileread - so, some people still do. (Thats what happens if you spend more on marketing than on software engineering.)

- Does use auto hyphening - presumably with english language settings, non defeatable, also set to only trigger with loooong words, so not optimized for justified view in the slightest. This happens if your engineers have no background in making ereaders.

- People that tell you "just use an alternative eReader app", are delusional. Here is why. Font contrast and kerning. Great in the native app - sucks on all other apps (tried so far), if the custom contrast settings (setable via longpress) stick or not - depends on the app. On the official Kindle app it doesnt work - which makes it unusable (font color isnt black but a light grey - image contrast cant be altered - we can end right there).

- With the comixology app it works. You even can install a screen rotation app, and once you allow it to un in the background (battery savings setting under user settings), it will rotate the app successfully (for guided view). This for once is actually surprisingly usable. Its great in fact.

- Using "Perfect Viewer" - the user contrast settings again dont work. That is, image contrast enhancement works for the first image thats displayed - but not on any of the others. Sounds like hit and miss? - Well, at least you can alter the image contrast via the built in Perfect Viewer settings (hue and contrast) and thereby greatly better the contrast and sharpness of the displayed image. If you play with it for about half an hour, you'll end up with a usable result. Actually works great in the end (image position center, always use half pages, set hue and contrast (actually contrast and lightness) manually). But I'd actually guess, that noone in here will do this - and most will complain about a washed out image.

- To this day I don't know what the "optimize contrast" option in individual app settings does. And I have no way to find out. Great. How abouta manual? In english maybe? One can still dream.. Also - there are about 5 occurences of percentage "readed" still left in the english translation of the most current firmware. Get a native english speaker to go over your translation - maybe.

- The cover it comes with is adding to the very slim footprint, but it has a hard plastic shell in the back. Thats a design failure. We all know by now, that the texture of an ereaders back matters. Most have gone with either soft plastic, or delivered a cover that has fake leather/a soft textile in the back AND the front. With the likebook you have the cheap black plastic shell feeling of ereader greatness. Not that great. The next time, spend 2 dollars more on the casing and make people happy.

- The "just use an android app" excuse for everything not working as it should (how about optimized contrast profiles for the most popular apps?, how about a default reading software that actually works with hyphenated ebooks) is a lame one - and most users will end up with a collection of hearsay applications - wrongly set (most ereading apps including moon+ will come with tablet presets (animations, image backgrounds...) that you have to change with an ereader. Again, I see no one in here at least mentioning that.

And now to the heartbreaking part - the likebook mars is so close to being great, its almost a tragedy.

The orange tinted nightmode backlight is great - people still using kindles with white leds only are missing out, this is "the future" (/or recent past, depending on your ereader.. ). There is no way (out of the box) to adjust its color temperature, which is a tad too orange on all settings, but your eyes eventually adjust - and you dont mind. Hint - would profit majorly from a color adjustment option (as far as it is possible with only white and orange leds).

- the top left icon on the touchscreen has a touch miss rate of about 30%. It seemingly too small. Also its often used for home or back - which is a pitty. Design this better for a better user experience.

- If you sync your books via dropbox sync - the library doesnt refresh (WHAT?), not even on a reboot (WHAT?). If you sync via usb - it does so in realtime.

- I've had issues with an ebook cover not being displayed after deleting a book and reuploading - I've yet to figure out what causes it. I've had another issue of the built in ereader displaying a cached version of an epub rather than the actual one that was on the device - until I rebooted (what) - so part of this seems to be a "who the heck knows what database options they use" problem. Again, no one is writing about that. Troubleshooting this was bothersome and no solution yet.

The strongest point so far - for this ereader is customizability. That even goes for the native ereader app. To be able to set different modes of touch interact (Kindle style; only left, right, center zones, ..) is great. To be able to set font contrast that gradually is especially great, same for font size, page borders and so on. But - may I suggest showing numbers for those steps? Because one slider may have 50, the other one may have 10, on some numbers show up on scrolling on others they dont... - so going back to the default preset even is problematic, because you dont exactly know which one it is - and you can only guess - because you cant see the actual settings (slider numbers/positions).

Readability of this Carta eink is the best I've seen so far on a capacitive touch frontlight ereader. Their diffusion layer is top. Even seems better at a slightly steeper angle than 90°, which is the way to actually read books. Wonderful - again, hardware is top.

Footprint is great. They must use the smallest battery available (and yes, battery life isnt great), but this device is slim. And about as light as I imagine you can make it for the size. Again - hardware design is top. Corners are a bit too "round" to match with the still square eink display - but thats nitpicking on design choices..


Will test Ivona compatibility next. Stay tuned.

Also - shame on this only being a hype thread so far.

The Likebook mars touches on achieving greatness, but - in the end isnt there yet. I'm imagining, that all optimization went into the capabilities for the chinese user, and that they get a great reading experience - and optimized/at least working contrast profiles for certain apps, while western users mostly dont.

Thats the likebook story in one paragraph.

Havent tested koreader on the device yet - which is probably the reading platform ("app") I'll end up with.

[notimp]

One more thing - setting page refresh to "no animation" actually isnt needed for a sharp image, on either comic viewers (f.e. Perfect Viewer), or ebook readers. It all depends on contrast and kerning settings. Leaving on animations softens the image a little - but with the "right/wrong" settings, this eReader can actually bolden fonts and images (edge contrast) too much - so if you then enable animated transitions, it actually gets better... (found out in setting Perfect Viewer settings).

So presets/contrast settings are all that matters. Its not as easy as "you have to disable any animations - always" - thats just the shortcut for people that dont know better. Gradual contrast settings that actually stick - are "the king" on this device. Any app that doesnt support those will end up with a potentially worse than necessary image result in the end.

Also - the "correct" settings depend on backlight brightness (you can make the lines "darker" if you have your backlight brighter) - which also depends on actual content. (You need to set it brighter for comics or mangas, less bright for ereading.) So have fun.

[notimp]

Ivona TTS works (tested with FBReader (older version - newer ones were too "appified" (stripped of settings options) with the TTS plugin), once you've enabled the Ivona apps to be able to run in the background (user settings, power management). You have to do it for both the main app, as well as all the voices app packages you have installed.

You also have to enable it for the FBReader TTS plugin (which comes as a seperate apk).

Voice samples recorded via smarphone from a bluetooth speaker (so people that havent used Ivona voices before can get an impression of how well it works):

Ivona on likebook sample - english (Amy):
https://vocaroo.com/i/s1X2h995nJ5s

Ivona on likebook sample - german (Marlene):
https://vocaroo.com/i/s0VhcPJ6ONlv

(Raised volume in audacity - because I noticed too late that recording volume was too low, so some of the minor crackle at the top end is caused by this, not the app. )

IMPORTANT: As another user in here stated before, the audio jack output quality is HORRIBLE - as in unusabe. It cuts most of the low end and some of the mid end of all audio. Bluetooth output is fine. You HAVE to the use Likebooks bluetooth audio, if you want to use it for any audio critical applications. Again - no youtube "reviewer" mentioned that even once. Thanks.

Also - if you want to get those Ivona voices going and dont have them backed up (including obb folders) from a few years ago, you are out of luck. Amazon bought the company - quickly removed the best (also free) voices they offered from Google Play - and called it a day. You might find the packages on apk mirror sites still, they are around 150mb per voice apk. You also need the corresponding Ivona Voice HQ app. And a reader that can choose TTS voices, and do so even corresponding to the ebooks language settings (FBReader (older version, using 2.5.10) can, it also has the ability to set the TTS speed most gradually, from all the TTS capable reader apps I've tested.).

Having the play store active and working probably is needed for this setup as well.

edit: All custom ttf fonts for a hacked Kindle I've aggregated over the years, work fine in the native eReader app, and all apps that use Android system fonts. Even Bookerly works. Times new roman is still better though.

[notimp]

Two quick cellphone shots to illustrate some of the settings.

Backlight is set to night and 8, which is good setting for reading books I find, contrast for both the comixology as well as the Perfect Viewer apps was actually optimized for night an backlight set at 16, so you can get even more contrast out of this thing. (Also, darker details might become more visible, kerning then doesnt seem that pronounced).

Smartphone white balance took away some of the orangey glow.

Comixology (longpress the app icon, set "start custom greyscale adjustment: Text: 0, Picture: 29")

src: From Hell

Perfect Viewer (Saturation: 100, Lightness: 17 (or 25, depends))

src: 20th Century Boys

For perfect viewer set the image to be centered, and half pages only - this will split double pages and prevent you having to press two times for every page turn. You can still scroll a page up and down, if something gets croped in the default position, but with mangas thats actually hardly ever needed. Also, with these settings I also have screen transitions left>right enabled. It softens the image and makes it more readable.. (could have also gone the other way round, and maybe not used a saturation setting as high... )

Also set exit as a one touch action for upper mid (or any other position on the touchscreen), so exiting the app becomes quicker.

[notimp]

Originally Posted by franzli

I've been using MoonReader and Librera for reading, with a slight preference for the latter maybe.

Librera is actually great. Thank you for the recommendation, wouldnt have picked it up otherwise.

Its native settings are close to perfect, which is great as well (comes with Times New Roman, good page margins, autohyphenations that are useful, respects epub formating, has a setting to disable page transition animations, default view is black text on a white background, which is ideal for our Likebooks, progression bar isnt too "in your face" - the whole set up maybe takes three minutes).

edit: Librera actually has a pro version that gets rid of the ads, and its available in the play store as well - if you fail to find it at first (as I did on the eInk device of my choice ) here are some links: http://librera.mobi/#download Its a great app imho. Well worth tipping the dev.

The app also comes with a TTS engine built in thats potent enough to use Ivona voices on its own - so I can actually scrap recommending an old version of FBReader all the time (FBreader still can select the correct TTS voice dependant on a books language, while Librera con not, so its not out of the loop entirely.. )

Setting it up with Ivona voices is simple as well. Set text speed to 150, thats it. Text speed steps in +/-10 steps, but can even be set more gradually. 150 is just about fine though. And thats it, no more text to speech related settings needed. (I also set system TTS speed to fast, not sure if that has an impact, but I thought I'd at least mention it. )

With this in play - I might actually write another tutorial for Ivona voices - because we now have a fully functioning high level TTS engine on a pretty good eReader of our choice. Setback is, that you have to use a Bluetooth speaker, because the audio jack is so crappy.

The next (10+") Likebook comes with built in speakers though, so keep that in mind.


Did a fatigue test on Ivona Marlene on the Likebook Mars, and reached 80 pages of a small test book (33% finished ) with no problems. Thats very good. Means, that this is usable for applications most people might not have used it before.

From a price/value point, maybe get some of those bluetooth speakers as well ( h**ps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AudlBNbi-Xg ) they actually are good, and you then have a neat little setup to lean the Likebook mars against. (Tested and working)

Auto page turns in Librera work as well btw.

Ivona voice language has to be set in the Librera TTS dialog option, every time you want change it - but its actually pretty fast.
--


I'll look into sourcing the TTS voices from Android apk sites next. Will update as I go aiong.

edit:

Good news!

Apkpure still has them.

Ivona TTS HQ main app:
https://apkpure.com/ivona-text-to-sp.../com.ivona.tts

Amy (best english voice):
https://apkpure.com/ivona-amy-uk-eng...ta.eng.gbr.amy

Marlene (german voice):
https://apkpure.com/ivona-marlene-ge...eu.deu.marlene

You can install the main app (apk) as you'd normaly do (enable install apks from unknown sources in the Android settings, use the likebooks Filemanager (which is actually not that bad.. )). For the .xapk(s) - simply rename them to .zip and extract them on a PC, they then have an apk in them as well (which you have to install), as well as the Android/obb folder for that voice, which you have to move to Android/obb on the device (f.e. likebook mars) manually. Once youve the apks installed, and folders moved, you have to navigate to

Usersetings/Power Management/Application Startup management and allow background activity for all Ivona apks you installed. Then at least start them all once, I guess, to see if they are working..

The final step simply is to go into the Android language settings and set them (TTS settings) to an Ivona voice (choose fast.. ) by default - if you want to.

Both Librera and FBreaders TTS plugin will detect all installed TTS voices an come with their own TTS engine, so theres a small setup process in the ereader apps as well, but as said before, with Librera thats simply choosing the right Ivona language voice and setting voice speed to 150 (once, for most people), and thats it.

Happy reading (as in listening).

so long

notimp

edit: The entire installation is free. As said before, you probably have to have the Play Store enabled on the device, at least it makes setup easier.

Cost for a top of the line TTS solution realized this way is 200 USD for the likebook mars (might still drop a little) and 70 USD for the IKEA bluetooth speaker (price includes the separately available battery.. ) to lean it against. eReader and TTS software is free.

I'll mention that, because some of you might have a visually impaired person among their friends and families, and this really is as good as you can get with todays technology, for them to get a dedicated reading device that reads to them. At least think about it.

Setup should be easy enough at this point, that any hipster might be able to do it. Read this posting closely.

[ivanvt]

@notimp, i feel exactly like you, such a promising hardware with little to no development.

Jack of all trades, master of none..

[thordk]

Got my Mars yesterday and is until now very happy... I have transfered all my books to my SD card. Have anyone else had any issues with this and opening books ? .. it gives an error when opening with the native ebook reader but able to open if i choose other app like Moon+ ?