Kobo Sage page buttons flaky

[mezzanine]

Originally Posted by mkozlows

The buttons on the Sage are better than the Forma buttons. Mechanically, they're perfectly fine. The "sticking" that people are talking about here (which also happens to me) is not a mechanical problem -- the button isn't literally stuck down as far as I can tell, just the software thinks it is.

When the page-forward button gets "stuck" like that, I stop it by hitting the page-back button. After I page back to where I should be, the first time I try to turn the page forward, nothing happens despite the button clearly pressing a switch; the next time, it actually pages forward. It very much seems like the software (I use KOReader, but it doesn't seem to be limited to KOReader) is missing the button-up event every so often, so treating it like the button is just held down until the next time it sees a button-up.

I'm really surprised this doesn't happen to everyone, because it does not feel at all like a hardware problem, but a software one. Maybe there's something going on with the hardware that I just can't feel?

I'm talking specifically about non-responsive page turn presses. The button is pushed and travels the full motion such that the switch should be activated, but there is no page turn.

Someone mentioned it's related to power management and I'm inclined to agree because it seems similar in pattern to some touchscreen sensitivity complaints I've read about with other models and experienced myself that I ultimately attributed to software.

The battery performance is every bit as bad as I was expecting it to be.

[Sirtel]

The Sage buttons not responding is definitely a software issue, because it improved slightly with a software update. Unfortunately it didn't vanish entirely and still happens occasionally.

Hardware-wise the buttons are fine, although not on the same level as the Oasis buttons. Those are supreme.

[mezzanine]

There was a good review buried in the original Sage thread in which a new Sage owner was deciding between the Sage and Forma and the buttons became a big deciding factor. This person found they much preferred the Forma buttons both because of their placement and because they had the same experience of missed page turn presses with the Sage.

I haven't had a chance to put hours on the Sage to get a sense for the frequency of missed presses, but I sure hope it's less than the previously mentioned 20% estimate. I'm not expecting it to be overly annoying or it would be a bigger issue and it doesn't pop up too much, although it was enough to dissuade at least one reviewer.

Turns out I'd kinda glossed over some of the complaints about the buttons in the early wave of initial reviews.

[mkozlows]

It's much less than twenty percent.

[NiLuJe]

Depends on if you let the device enter standby or not; if you don't, it's 0% ;o).

(The touch panel suffers from similar "oh, hey, if I'm in low power mode, where did that first input frame go? Nobody knows, but at least I still woke up the kernel" issues ).

[mezzanine]

Originally Posted by NiLuJe

Depends on if you let the device enter standby or not; if you don't, it's 0% ;o).

(The touch panel suffers from similar "oh, hey, if I'm in low power mode, where did that first input frame go? Nobody knows, but at least I still woke up the kernel" issues ).

I'm skeptical that standby can account for all the misses. I have experienced a missed button press immediately following a successful one.

Someone said they moved the switches to the outside of the buttons instead of the middle like on the Forma. Maybe pressure placement is a relevant factor.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by NiLuJe

Depends on if you let the device enter standby or not; if you don't, it's 0% ;o).

(The touch panel suffers from similar "oh, hey, if I'm in low power mode, where did that first input frame go? Nobody knows, but at least I still woke up the kernel" issues ).

Yes. Though I suspect maybe four unrelated issues:
1. The sleep / standby that sometimes leaves text up and not the sleep screen.
2. Some sort of not-quite-standby-sleep where a swipe wakes the buttons if you stare at a page too long.
3. Not pressing the button at the middle (the original libra needs pressed at the outer curve).
4. Some other fault maybe in the 1st HW revision, as there are two Sage model numbers. I've never ever seen the pages keep flipping; the "sticky" bug.

I've never experienced the buttons fail if I close cover when not reading and read without a pause. My Sage has the later model number. Though of course there might be more than two versions now.

The earlier version seems to be able to cast a slight shadow on the eink panel from the bezel, according to photos of earliest reviews. I can't get any shadow from the bezel on my eink screen. But that might be an illusion. There was definitely two model numbers of Sage on the Kobo site.

I just ordered a 3rd Sage from Kobo. Previously they didn't supply to Ireland. The 1st was from Argos and 2nd from Amazon (no price last week on co uk or de Amazon. No stock in Argos ie, but price.)

[Quoth]

Oh, and I tried various 4.33.x, but 4.32.x is still best for Sage, otherwise issues with Advanced Notebook Export.
I tested it with Kobo Stylus pen that came with Elipsa and bought an almost identical "Adrawpen" for MS Surface at 1/2 the price on Amazon. Works identically.

[mezzanine]

The button issue is bigger than I realized. The Sage is such a hilarious fail device in every way except the screen.

But damn do I appreciate that screen. It's the first time I've experienced that goldilocks feeling of things finally being right with an ereader screen.

[MGlitch]

Originally Posted by Quoth

Oh, and I tried various 4.33.x, but 4.32.x is still best for Sage, otherwise issues with Advanced Notebook Export.
I tested it with Kobo Stylus pen that came with Elipsa and bought an almost identical "Adrawpen" for MS Surface at 1/2 the price on Amazon. Works identically.

*best for Sage if you’re going to use the advanced notebooks otherwise upgrading poses no issues.

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by mezzanine

The button issue is bigger than I realized. The Sage is such a hilarious fail device in every way except the screen.

But damn do I appreciate that screen. It's the first time I've experienced that goldilocks feeling of things finally being right with an ereader screen.

The screen and also the faster processor. It's noticeably speedier than my Libra 2.

I can live with the buttons, although it's a bit annoying. Still, they don't "get stuck" very often on my Sage.

The Libra 2 actually has a better screen (albeit smaller, of course). It has no button issues either. But it's slower and many people have had freezing/rebooting problems with their Libra 2.

[mezzanine]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

The screen and also the faster processor. It's noticeably speedier than my Libra 2.

I can live with the buttons, although it's a bit annoying. Still, they don't "get stuck" very often on my Sage.

The Libra 2 actually has a better screen (albeit smaller, of course). It has no button issues either. But it's slower and many people have had freezing/rebooting problems with their Libra 2.

I actually wasn't expecting to learn the button problem is as significant as it is when I did a quick search on reddit. It was weird to be looking at posts from 6 months ago and people then were confused why Kobo hadn't fixed it by now if it's related to power saving firmware. Some people are saying that finally this latest update improves it.

I've appreciated the quickness of the dictionary compared to previous readers, although I'm in a minority of users who would trade processing power for battery life.

I was disappointed by the buttons, but the screen has surprised me on the positive side. I wasn't expecting it to be as improved over the previous generation of Carta screen as it is, although it would be more accurate to say the combo of lighting and screen has exceeded my expectations because the light uniformity coming from my Aura Ones is especially noticeable.

It's not just the light, though. I had a moment earlier that I questioned if the resolution of the Sage is higher than the Aura One because subjectively it seemed to me that individual letters are sharper, and that's not something I would expect, but maybe it's a perceptual effect of improved contrast.

It's a good example for me of my own priorities when it comes to ereaders for any future buying decisions. The entire device is almost comically bad from my perspective, but I'm delighted with it because of the screen.

[mezzanine]

My new theory is that most of the dead button presses are simply a result of not pressing hard/long enough. My tendency is to apply the minimum pressure to compress the button, but that doesn't work with these buttons. They don't pick up light presses that seemingly should be effective.

I can't even imagine how many Sages have been returned to Kobo because of this issue if reddit is any indication.

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by mezzanine

My new theory is that most of the dead button presses are simply a result of not pressing hard/long enough. My tendency is to apply the minimum pressure to compress the button, but that doesn't work with these buttons. They don't pick up light presses that seemingly should be effective.

No, it's not that. When they don't respond, they don't respond until you touch the screen, no matter how many times or how hard you press the button.

[NiLuJe]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

No, it's not that. When they don't respond, they don't respond until you touch the screen, no matter how many times or how hard you press the button.

FWIW, I *cannot* reproduce that in KOReader.

Whether it be the Elipsa's panel or the Sage's buttons, I can only ever miss *a single* gesture, and only if that event is a wakeup source (that's generally a single press down -> up for buttons, and a single contact down -> up for the panel, although it's more complicated there because it also suffers from spurious 0-pressure events issues). Duplicating the offending gesture works immediately (and the kernel is woken up by the missed input).

(For those missed inputs, I've also *never* seen weirder crap like only seeing an up without a down, or vice-versa; or even parts of it being interleaved with a later input frame; something which could arguably confuse the hell out of a finger tracking algo. AFAICT, the entire gesture gets sent into the void and never hits userland.).

I've never seen the "stuck" issue either on my device, but KOReader's KEY_REPEAT handling is fairly basic, so there may be a bit of software tomfoolery there, even if I've never actually seen spurious REPEAT events myself during my extended time poring over input frames on those devices .