Aura ONE Kobo Aura One owners thread

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by Barty

Q for owners: When you touch the screen does it feel like glass or plastic?

It feels like sort of a soft, warm plexiglass; not hard and cold, like a tablet having Gorilla glass.

Originally Posted by MGlitch

It's possible to get two or three more lines of text on the Aura One, maybe even four. Though it would require the text be siginifcantly closer to the edges of the screen. The two or three lines are entirely just from the blank space at the bottom of the Aura One, the fourth+ would be from that space as well as the left and right margins.

I realize that some people prefer slightly thicker margins, I prefer to maximize the amount of text on a page. Especially since discovering the joy of a capacitive touch screen, no slightly raised bezel to cast shadows on the screen from outside sources of light.

I'll try and get a photo of my Aura One screen up sometime tonight after I get home.

How would you get those extra lines? The only possibility I can think of is some way to fill up the space at the bottom; I really wouldn't want to smash the text right up to the edges, and go even lower on the line spacing. The line spacing is already at the lowest, and the side margins is next to the lowest. When setting it to the lowest setting, the text extends in width, and combined with the bigger margin at the top and bottom, it makes the page feel unbalanced.

By the way: I also feel that the side bezels should have been a bit wider, or the top bezels a bit smaller. Tablets and readers (and computer monitors) with bezels of non-symmetrical widths always feel strange to me.

[MGlitch]

Font used - Literata with Panose stripped out

Font Size - approximately 14 ticks from the lowest setting (this is going to be the option that needs playing with)

Line Spacing - set to minimum

Margin - set one tick above minimum

This is with the patches available for firmware 4.x applied. Left, right, and top are pretty smushed I'd seriously question if I could get another character in even when combining the space of the left and right margins. With the top there is no way I'd get a full line, nor even the majority of a line, it's closer to the spacing between lines of text. The bottom margin offers the 'most' space, even there I could fit maybe 3/5th of a line of text and even then it would run smack into the bottom bezel.

I haven't tried the newer 24 line spacing options that Geoff posted, so it's possible I could maybe squeeze one line in between the top and bottom margins with that patch enabled. Though I would be surprised if that ended up being the case.

As mentioned, I don't have an issue with text running to the edge of the screen. I originally bought the H2O for the ability to display more text per page than the 6" readers out there, the same holds true for the One.

[John F]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

...

When converting files to KEPUB, there's a bug in this (unofficial/experimental) feature that cuts off part of the final letter on a line, at the right, which I have been unable to work around.

...

I use this in the "Extra CSS" in "Look and Feel", and it works for me (usually solves the problem of cutoff characters). Don't ask me what it does or what the side effects are.

.calibre {
margin 0 0 0 0;
}

Don't quote me on this.

[Katsunami]

Nah, I have to go and patch the firmware, then I'll leave it as is. The amount of text on the screen as I have it now is fine, with the full screen hack/setting and the margin set to next to lowest one.

The one improvement I'm noticing with the KA1 is that I can read somewhat faster, because the lines are longer as compared to a six inch reader; but not so long that they become uncomfortable to read.

Pity that the space on the bottom can't be used to show a reading percentage of the current chapter. Even if you use EPUB to show it, the space becomes huge.

I don't really mind the header and the footer, but Kobo should add an (official) option to either remove them, or make them smaller. Now they just claim too much space (but still the KA1 can show more text than a six inch device).

[petercreasey]

Glass

[anacreon]

Pound's Cantos are perfectly readable as is on the One, better on page width. It should be even better when the relevant patches will be available for us non tech-savvy.

[robko]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

It feels like sort of a soft, warm plexiglass; not hard and cold, like a tablet having Gorilla glass.

That's what I would say too.

[nutsheart]

Katsunami, I see you're reading Musashi... great story!

[anacreon]

Solved.

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by nutsheart

Katsunami, I see you're reading Musashi... great story!

I've read it twice in the past, but I'm not reading it now. It's just one of the very few hard cover books I've left (Along with a few Forgotten Realms paperbacks, of which there aren't yet e-books.)

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by anacreon

EDIT: I realized I should have turned it off/on before calling for help. On turning it off, I noticed that I had the Fnac cover when off. After turning it back on everything seems back to normal, including the no-logo sleep cover.

First time ever I had such an incident. Any idea?

I've seen a couple of oddities so far that disappeared after a power cycle. I'm beginning to wonder if the 4.0 firmware is having some issues with not updating in-memory data properly.

[WARPed1701D]

Originally Posted by Stingo

-In night light there is a noticeable green/blue blotch about a third of the way across on the bottom. It extends up about an inch.

I have this too. Goes away at higher lighting levels but I was reading at
2% in a dark room last night and that blotch is highly annoying. You have to make the screen much brighter to get rid of it.

I've also noticed that the auto natural light doesn't go fully to night mode. Stops about a eighth of the way from the end unless I manually drag it over. This was well after my set bedtime too.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by WARPed1701D

I've also noticed that the auto natural light doesn't go fully to night mode. Stops about a eighth of the way from the end unless I manually drag it over. This was well after my set bedtime too.

I turned off the auto natural light after realizing I felt like I was reading by candlelight.

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by WARPed1701D

I've also noticed that the auto natural light doesn't go fully to night mode. Stops about a eighth of the way from the end unless I manually drag it over. This was well after my set bedtime too.

If you drag the natural light all the way to the right, then the screen becomes really *really* orange. I think that's the reason why it doesn't go that far in auto mode.

I actually like the natural light in auto mode, but the auto mode for brightness doesn't work. It's always way too bright. When reading in bed, with a spotlight shining over my left shoulder, the reader thinks there's a lot of light, and sets the brightness to 80%. When setting it myself, I set it at 15%. When reading in different places in the house, during the day, the brightness setting is also much higher compared to what I would set myself.

[Akbar]

Originally Posted by cerem0ny

There is an option, ive done it to both my devices (pictured), one through a patch and one from just editing some text files, check the Patching 4.01... sticky in the Developers Corner on kobo mobileread forums.

It seems that Aura One screen is not significantly bigger, nor much better (brightness, contrast etc) than that of H2O. And as some people say, neither the screen refresh rate is any faster on the One than on the H2O. If I have a 6" e-reader, I would have welcomed the significant increase in screen size. But having a H2O, for me it is really difficult to justify buying it.