Kindle Firmware 5.12.5

[jhowell]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Amazon even removed 5.12.4 from download because it wasn't stable enough.

How do you know the reason for the removal of the download link?

Amazon just says “Software update is unavailable at this time.” They don’t say why.

There are other possibilities, such as occasional failures during the installation process that might not be an issue once the installation has completed. We just don’t know.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by jhowell

How do you know the reason for the removal of the download link?

Amazon just says “Software update is unavailable at this time.” They don’t say why.

There are other possibilities, such as occasional failures during the installation process that might not be an issue once the installation has completed. We just don’t know.

If it was due to an installation failure, why leave 5.12.4 on the OTA server? The usual reason to pull firmware is because of bugs.

[Dr. Drib]

Originally Posted by j.p.s

At the time of the Voyage release:

the Kindle Basic had:
167 dpi display
no frontlight
no page turn buttons

the PW2 had:
212 dpi display
frontlight
no page turn buttons

the Voyage had:
300 dpi flush display
frontlight (with more LEDs?)
page turn sensors with adjustable sensitivity and adjustable haptic feedback
lighter weight, thinner, narrower, and shorter

Whether all that merits flagship status at that time is subjective.

Yes.

[rcentros]

Originally Posted by murraypaul

How many people outside of this forum do you think actually give a damn about any of this? The device can buy, download and read books from Amazon. That is what it needs to do.

Exactly. Most people don't side-load fonts, don't buy books from anywhere but Amazon and are perfectly happy with their PW3 "as is." I get tired of the constant beating down of anything not Kobo. It gets really old.

[tomsem]

Originally Posted by tomsem

I’m having problems on one of my 2 PW4’s with downloading samples: I request, but it never shows up. I have to use some other device to request it. And today it didn’t deliver a purchase I made even though it is my default device. The other PW4 has no trouble with samples.

I finally did Reset, reregister, and it seems to have un-stuck the delivery queue. No doubt Amazon CS (at least in their better days) could have done something on their end, but I have not had much luck with them lately.

I wanted to get all of the books I had on it back so I created a collection of everything downloaded (a little faster to use ‘add all on page’ option).

Then to restore in same order it was in (more or less), I set order to Recent and navigated to the last page of the collection and started d/l of the last book and worked my way back in batches, removing the downloaded titles from the collection before doing the next batch.

Turns out the Kindle is terrible at this. The download adds a second entry for the same book at the top of Recent order (page 1) but leaves it in place at the end as well. And after removing the titles (Using add/remove menu option), there is no refresh of the collection, so the downloaded titles visually remain in the collection list. Had to Back out and re-open to make them go away. Also one of the titles was in Spanish and since this was the first Spanish title downloaded after the reset, it downloaded Spanish-English dictionary and THAT showed up in the collection I was editing. Strange.

[Beggarmaster]

Originally Posted by j.p.s

At the time of the Voyage release:

the Kindle Basic had:
167 dpi display
no frontlight
no page turn buttons

the PW2 had:
212 dpi display
frontlight
no page turn buttons

the Voyage had:
300 dpi flush display
frontlight (with more LEDs?)
page turn sensors with adjustable sensitivity and adjustable haptic feedback
lighter weight, thinner, narrower, and shorter

Whether all that merits flagship status at that time is subjective.

That was actually very helpful to put things into perspective, thank you. I guess my question was misguided and my real shock is that any of these things can be sold for $250+ when the iteration of the technology is remarkably minimal as compared to most consumer technology. That price point just seems a bit bizarre to me, but I guess the demand justifies it, since these things apparently do sell.

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by rcentros

I get tired of the constant beating down of anything not Kobo. It gets really old.

Yep. This.

[rcentros]

Originally Posted by Beggarmaster

Question: Was the Voyage supposed to be a flagship product? I like it at the price I paid, but it sounds like this thing was sold for over $250, which just seems absurd. ...

At the time there was nothing like the Voyage. Even now, the build quality is excellent. I don't think any other reader matches it. Just today I was trying to count the number of LEDs the Voyage has. I think it has five, but I couldn't count them because they don't "cone" at all, at any light level. I can't even see the LEDs when i stare down past the bezel. This is unique as far as I can tell. And no screen that I've seen is as sharp as the Voyage. The PW3 doesn't even come close to matching it. I think that's probably why we'll never see a new Voyage, the components were just too expensive.

[DuckieTigger]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

If it was due to an installation failure, why leave 5.12.4 on the OTA server? The usual reason to pull firmware is because of bugs.

You are proving jhowell's point exactly. If it is an occasional installation failure when sideloading the update, why remove it from the OTA?

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by DuckieTigger

You are proving jhowell's point exactly. If it is an occasional installation failure when sideloading the update, why remove it from the OTA?

Because OTA updates are the same installation as side loading. If one fails, so will the other.

[NullNix]

Originally Posted by murraypaul

How many people outside of this forum do you think actually give a damn about any of this?

People not in the computer biz aren't even going to know or care that "firmware updates" with version numbers on are even a thing on Kindles, even if they know they are on other things. My mother doesn't know about that sort of thing (I just checked) and she's a trained physicist and mathematician with someone who *is* in the biz for a son and still reads scientific papers for fun, and *does* know what version of Android her tablet is running. If someone as geeky as that just sees a Kindle as a thing that lets you buy and read books and occasionally pops back to the home screen on its own (that would be an autoreboot, possibly accompanied by a firmware update) and gains new features now and then (she hadn't noticed this was correlated with reboots), more or less *everyone* is going to see it that way, I reckon.

Kindles are devices to read on. That's all. The only reason they were ever successful is that they are not general-purpose computers and you're not meant to have to care about what firmware version they're running or anything like that, any more than the user of a normal computer desktop has to care about the precise version of the C library or the precise build number of the OS kernel. If a normal user experiences behavioural degradation noticeable enough that they have to care about that, the software developer has *failed*.

Speaking as someone who has failed that way many times in the past... as, I suspect, have a good few of us here.

[Dr. Drib]

Originally Posted by rcentros

At the time there was nothing like the Voyage. Even now, the build quality is excellent. I don't think any other reader matches it. Just today I was trying to count the number of LEDs the Voyage has. I think it has five, but I couldn't count them because they don't "cone" at all, at any light level. I can't even see the LEDs when i stare down past the bezel. This is unique as far as I can tell. And no screen that I've seen is as sharp as the Voyage. The PW3 doesn't even come close to matching it. I think that's probably why we'll never see a new Voyage, the components were just too expensive.

Second this.

(But my Oasis 3 does come awfully close.)

[dex87]

So PW3 is eol.

Sent from my Nokia 7.1 using Tapatalk

[DuckieTigger]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Because OTA updates are the same installation as side loading. If one fails, so will the other.

And the difference, which you are too stubborn to consider, is Amazon's complete control of which Kindle gets which update in OTA. Some may not get it if they are flagged as possible installation issue.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by DuckieTigger

And the difference, which you are too stubborn to consider, is Amazon's complete control of which Kindle gets which update in OTA. Some may not get it if they are flagged as possible installation issue.

All the Kindles that had 5.12.4 available for download got it OTA. So I see no control there. I see Amazon taking down 5.12.4 for download due to something wrong with it yet leaving it available for OTA and then EOLing the PW3 instead of allowing 5.12.5 for the PW3.