Sage Kobo Sage opinions

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by davidfor

Which device does devmode keep awake forever? I use it all the time and it is not the case for any of mine devices (excluding the Sage as I don't have enough experience to judge). There are options in the developer options, such as "Force WiFi ON", that will do this, but even that means the WiFi doesn't automatically disconnect and doesn't stop sleeping. There may have been problems with some firmware versions, but, I don't remember it happening for years.

I don't know for the Sage, but Android devices can definitely be kept awake forever in the developer mode; and basically every device which ran embedded software I ever worked with either had an option to stay awake, or stayed awake by default. It's super irritating if a device you're developing on, or for, goes to sleep every few minutes.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

I don't know for the Sage, but Android devices can definitely be kept awake forever in the developer mode; and basically every device which ran embedded software I ever worked with either had an option to stay awake, or stayed awake by default. It's super irritating if a device you're developing on, or for, goes to sleep every few minutes.

Oh, you weren't talking about Kobo ereaders. The developers mode on the Kobo devices does not do that. It might increase the battery drain, but, not buy to much. And if you want to stop the device from going to sleep, there are options in the normal part of the UI to do that.

[guti]

I got the Sage this week.

I'm positively impressed with the construction quality but negatively impressed with the weight: paired with the official cover is over 400g.

I'm positively impressed with the screen and the black of the ink: the difference with the Forma is clearly visible (especially by reading comics).

I'm impressed with the speed in some contexts, but fairly disappointed on others:
It is very fast when indexing books, when linking and downloading books.
It is a little faster than the FORMA in the menus or checking dictionary.
It is identical to FORMA when you turn the page when reading a book.

I haven't tried the writing features, but I don't know how much I will use this functionality in the future.
I am not interested in listening to audio books.

I'm really disappointed with the battery:
doing the same thing on both Sage and my 2 years old Forma it appear that on the Sage the percentage of battery drops at a rate that is more than double respect the old Forma.

A technical spec that was not reported by Kobo or on reviews is the amount of RAM used.
Checking it (easily accessible thanks to NickelMenu -> telnet and checking /proc/meminfo) it result that the Sage uses around ~320MB(!) of RAM compared to the 512MB used by the Forma.
I was convinced that the RAM memory was the same as Elipsa (1GB). I find it hard to believe and I can't explain the reason for this step backwards: I would be really glad if someone could point out to me that I was wrong on this point.

An information for those interested: from the /proc/cpuinfo the SoC used by the Sage result to be an Allwinner sunxi sun8iw15 that has 4 Cortex-A7 32bit core.

I was thrilled with the Forma and hoped this was a worthy successor, and I think that will be the case for many. But in my case I was hoping for more responsiveness respect the Forma, and there are weight and battery: a couple of things where it got very worse.

I'm not so sure to keep it and I'm acctually considering to return it under the 30 days policy of Kobo.

[MGlitch]

Not sure why you’re posting a Sage specific review in a thread for firmware for every device. I’d also be very surprised if it was actually 320MB of RAM as that’s not a typical amount, they’d need to have installed some rather small increment RAM chips to hit it. At a guess I’d say whatever you did ended up looking at what was being used currently not the sum total, which has been reported elsewhere on the forums as 512.

512 is also not a step back as the Sage isn’t meant to be a replacement for the Elipsa, it’s replacing the Forma which also ran with 512MB.

[guti]

I got the Sage this week.

I'm positively impressed with the construction quality but negatively impressed with the weight: paired with the official cover is over 400g.

I'm positively impressed with the screen and the black of the ink: the difference with the Forma is clearly visible (especially by reading comics).

I'm impressed with the speed in some contexts, but fairly disappointed on others:
It is very fast when indexing books, when linking and downloading books.
It is a little faster than the FORMA in the menus.
It is identical to FORMA when you turn the page when reading a book.

I haven't tried the writing features, which I don't know how much I will be able to leverage in the future.
I am not interested in listening to audio books.

I'm really disappointed with the battery:
doing the same thing on both Sage and my 2 years old Forma it appear that on the Sage the percentage of battery drops at a rate that is more than double respect the FORMA.

A technical spec that was not reported by Kobo or on reviews is the amount of RAM used.
Checking the amount of RAM (accessible thanks to NickelMenu -> telnet and checking /proc/meminfo) it result that the Sage uses around ~320MB(!) of RAM compared to the 512MB used by the Forma.
I was convinced that the RAM memory was the same as Elipsa (1GB). I find it hard to believe and I can't explain the reason for this step backwards: I would be really glad if someone could point out to me that I was wrong on this point.

An information for those interested: from the /proc/cpuinfo the SoC used by the Sage result to be an Allwinner sunxi sun8iw15 that has 4 Cortex-A7 32bit core.

I was thrilled with the Forma and hoped this was a worthy successor, and I think that will be the case for many.
But in my case I was hoping for more responsiveness, and the weight and battery where very worse compared to the Forma.

I'm not so sure to keep it and I'm acctually considering to return it under the 30 days policy of Kobo.

[MGlitch]

Replying here as well just to keep things clean. I’d be very surprised if it was actually 320MB of RAM as that’s not a typical amount, they’d need to have installed some rather small increment RAM chips to hit it. At a guess I’d say whatever you did ended up looking at what was being used currently not the sum total, which has been reported elsewhere on the forums as 512.

512 is also not a step back as the Sage isn’t meant to be a replacement for the Elipsa, it’s replacing the Forma which also ran with 512MB.

[guti]

Originally Posted by MGlitch

Not sure why you’re posting a Sage specific review in a thread for firmware for every device. I’d also be very surprised if it was actually 320MB of RAM as that’s not a typical amount, they’d need to have installed some rather small increment RAM chips to hit it. At a guess I’d say whatever you did ended up looking at what was being used currently not the sum total, which has been reported elsewhere on the forums as 512.

512 is also not a step back as the Sage isn’t meant to be a replacement for the Elipsa, it’s replacing the Forma which also ran with 512MB.

Sorry, I posted on the wrong thread. The post was meant for the "Kobo Sage opinions".
The memory amount is the one reported by the OS on /proc/meminfo as MemTotal: the same value is 496MB on Forma and 320MB on Sage. It should represent the physical ram minus a part reserved for kernel and other things.
Your guess is also mine, which is why I would be happy if someone would point out to me that I am wrong.

[guti]

Originally Posted by MGlitch

Replying here as well just to keep things clean. I’d be very surprised if it was actually 320MB of RAM as that’s not a typical amount, they’d need to have installed some rather small increment RAM chips to hit it. At a guess I’d say whatever you did ended up looking at what was being used currently not the sum total, which has been reported elsewhere on the forums as 512.

512 is also not a step back as the Sage isn’t meant to be a replacement for the Elipsa, it’s replacing the Forma which also ran with 512MB.

My bad for having posted initially on the wrong thread .

The memory amount is the one reported by the OS on /proc/meminfo as MemTotal: the same value is 496MB on Forma and 320MB on Sage. It should represent the physical ram minus a part reserved for kernel and other things.
Your guess is also mine, which is why I would be happy if someone would point out to me that I am wrong.

Note that my reference to Elipsa was due to the fact that I believed Elipsa and Sage had the same SoC and memory.
On my post I was actually comparing my Forma with the Sage.

[NiLuJe]

The Elipsa happens to have 1GB of LPDDR4, while the Sage only has 512MB of LPDDR4.

Other modern Kobo devices generally have 512MB of LPDDR2.

The Sage & Elipsa happen to run on a sunxi SoC, and the display driver there happens to make a ~120MB hole in RAM for its own personal use.
That, plus the other kernel & hardware related memory carveouts explain why you're only left with ~320MB of available RAM on the Sage (as opposed to something like ~480MB on an NXP board, IIRC).

[guti]

Originally Posted by NiLuJe

The Elipsa happens to have 1GB of LPDDR4, while the Sage only has 512MB of LPDDR4.

Other modern Kobo devices generally have 512MB of LPDDR2.

The Sage & Elipsa happen to run on a sunxi SoC, and the display driver there happens to make a ~120MB hole in RAM for its own personal use.
That, plus the other kernel & hardware related memory carveouts explain why you're only left with ~320MB of available RAM on the Sage (as opposed to something like ~480MB on an NXP board, IIRC).

Thank you very much for the explanation NiLuJe

[Sirtel]

I already love my Sage. The weight, the build quality, the screen, the contrast - it's all excellent. It's also snappier than my Libra 1, but then I still have only 2 books on it (haven't had the time to load the rest yet, as I'm checking and fixing many older books in the calibre editor). I've compared its screen with the Oasis 3, the Nook 7.8'' and the Libra 1. The text is easily equal or even better than that of the Oasis, head and shoulders above the Nook and the Libra 1. It's the darkest, most beautiful text I've seen since the Voyage. I'm looking forward to comparing it with the Libra 2.

The only disappointments are the battery life and the frontlight. The latter is somewhat uneven and the warm light doesn't look as nice as the Libra 1 light. It's paler and has a "pissier" yellow tone, compared to the deeper yellow of the Libra 1.

Oh well, can't have everything. Every one of my readers has some cons besides the pros.

[anacreon]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

I already love my Sage. The weight, the build quality, the screen, the contrast - it's all excellent. It's also snappier than my Libra 1, but then I still have only 2 books on it (haven't had the time to load the rest yet, as I'm checking and fixing many older books in the calibre editor). I've compared its screen with the Oasis 3, the Nook 7.8'' and the Libra 1. The text is easily equal or even better than that of the Oasis, head and shoulders above the Nook and the Libra 1. It's the darkest, most beautiful text I've seen since the Voyage. I'm looking forward to comparing it with the Libra 2.

The only disappointments are the battery life and the frontlight. The latter is somewhat uneven and the warm light doesn't look as nice as the Libra 1 light. It's paler and has a "pissier" yellow tone, compared to the deeper yellow of the Libra 1.

Oh well, can't have everything. Every one of my readers has some cons besides the pros.

I'm with you for everything except the screen color. For my devices, the Sage screen is much better than both Libra 1s I've had: the color is very even, a perfect very slightly warm white with natural light off, and a much more natural off-white color with natural light on (I'm usually at 3 , maximum 5, steps up).

Elipsa's screen is good, but I deeply regret that there is no 10" screen above 226 dpi, and I now only read books that need the bigger real estate on it. Until the Sage arrived, when at home I read everything on the Elipsa, because I couldn't bear the definitely very pissy yellow of the Libra 1, even when the natural light was at 0, even though I had already exchanged it because of the same problem.

[Josieb1]

Pissy yellow is a very good description of my Sage screen, except it’s pissy yellow with a touch of green

[spacepope]

I got the Kobo Sage on a whim yesterday, and now I'm debating whether to keep it or not. I had about $40 worth in points at rakuten, so I'm getting the pen for less than $10 and should ship in by the end of the week. I think how well it takes notes will be what determines if I keep this device or I sell it.

I think the weight is nice, and I like how it feels holding it two-handed. Because of the device's size, it likely won't be leaving the house often, so the poor battery life isn't super important to me (though I hope it improves over time with software updates).

I have learned I hate flush screens because they're fingerprint magnets! I love my Libra H2O screen for less glare and because I never get fingerprints on that sucker.

My planned use-cases, if I do keep the Sage:
⇒ Libra H2O: English reading, portable device I'll carry everywhere
⇒ Sage: Notetaking/diary, Japanese reading (probably manga only)
⇒ Kindle PW 3: Japanese novels

Having the Sage open for note-taking (such as new vocab words, keeping track of the plot) while reading with the PW3 actually sounds awesome, so we'll see! Here's hoping the notetaking is good.



Question: can you take notes while listening to an audiobook on the device? If so, I would really be interested in sideloading podcasts and taking notes at the same time.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by spacepope

Question: can you take notes while listening to an audiobook on the device? If so, I would really be interested in sideloading podcasts and taking notes at the same time.

As far as I can tell, there is no annotation function at all for audiobooks. With the player for purchased books, the stylus can be used as a touch device. With the player for sideloaded books, I got a error that the stylus is not supported for the format.