Firmware 4.35.20400

[Colonel Cathcart]

Originally Posted by rashkae

Considering how reluctant Kobo has been in the past to pull updates with widespread complaints of problems and mayhem on this forum, I speculate, (with absolutely no facts,) that the reason probably wasn't technical issues. The first thing that pops to my mind is something like licensing issues with the new fonts. Nothing gets through corporate bureaucracy quite like lawyers.

I would've guessed something subtle like slightly increased battery usage but now that you say it, it makes much more sense to the point I'm completely on-board with your speculation.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Colonel Cathcart

I would've guessed something subtle like slightly increased battery usage but now that you say it, it makes much more sense to the point I'm completely on-board with your speculation.

There are no new fonts in 4.35. 4.34 has the same fonts.

[MGlitch]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

There are no new fonts in 4.35. 4.34 has the same fonts.

from your own first post in this thread:

• We’ve added support so you can read in more languages. New fonts will be automatically applied when you open an eBook in Arabic, Armenian, Bengali, Canadian Aboriginal, Devanagari, Greek, Hebrew, Korean, or Tamil.

Emphasis mine.

[mzel]

Originally Posted by MGlitch

that post is hardly condemning of the firmware, you provide no follow up, no steps taken, no details of the circumstances surrounding it. It may well be a bug, but from the patch notes it's one that Kobo was satisfied allowing 4.34 to stay around while dealing with it.

Kobo generally do not pull firmware for something short of wide scale core functionality breaking issues. I believe that in the last 5-6 years the number of times they've done so can be counted on one hand, with fingers to spare.

I did mention that Borrow Books with Overdrive stopped working for me once I got 4.35 installed OTA without my active involvement.
Steps:

1. Install FW 4.35
2. Try to see the list of books on OverDrive
3. Observe the "Please Wait" message and no books
4. Try 5-7 times to no avail
5. Install FW 4.34 from the download
6. Observe the Borrow with Overdrive working as usual

I understand that probably I am one of the few who experience this. Otherwise we would hear more complaints. But for me this is a serious enough bug to reverse the release if I am the developer responsible for it.
P.S. I am a developer, though not responsible for this software

[MGlitch]

Originally Posted by mzel

I did mention that Borrow Books with Overdrive stopped working for me once I got 4.35 installed OTA without my active involvement.
Steps:

1. Install FW 4.35
2. Try to see the list of books on OverDrive
3. Observe the "Please Wait" message and no books
4. Try 5-7 times to no avail
5. Install FW 4.34 from the download
6. Observe the Borrow with Overdrive working as usual

I understand that probably I am one of the few who experience this. Otherwise we would hear more complaints. But for me this is a serious enough bug to reverse the release if I am the developer responsible for it.
P.S. I am a developer, though not responsible for this software

Right but this was an issue according to Kobo that existed in 4.34 for some instances. And they were ok with leaving 4.34 up. Thus why I don’t think this is the reason behind them pulling the firmware.

[John Hopper]

FWIW I also have had no problems sideloading books on 4.35.

Sent from my SM-F721B using Tapatalk

[bearymore]

Originally Posted by mathil

I've sideloaded several books on my Libra 2 (via Calibre) since updating with no issue whatsoever. So far I haven't noticed any weird behaviour compared to the previous firmware release.

I've likewise sideloaded several books on my Sage using Calibre. I haven't noticed any problems.

[Rand Brittain]

Like a fool, I just installed the Kobo7 version of the firmware on my Libra 2 after not carefully looking where I was clicking.

It seems to work okay except for the fact that I can't get a computer to recognize it as a USB drive any longer to load on the correct firmware. Factory reset didn't help. Any ideas on what I could do to get it back to normal?

[tschucha]

Originally Posted by Rand Brittain

Like a fool, I just installed the Kobo7 version of the firmware on my Libra 2 after not carefully looking where I was clicking.

It seems to work okay except for the fact that I can't get a computer to recognize it as a USB drive any longer to load on the correct firmware. Factory reset didn't help. Any ideas on what I could do to get it back to normal?

Try this -
Disconnect the USB cable.
Power off the Kobo.
Power off your PC.
Turn on your PC
Once it has booted up power on your Kobo
attach the USB cable to both.

I've had to do this on occasion when my PC didn't see the Kobo as a USB drive. Powering down both and starting again seemed to work for me.

[bearymore]

I'm wondering if the problem with the fiirmware doesn't relate to rendering. I'm reading a book with a photo section. I went to look at one of the photographs and when I returned to the original text page, the photograph still showed in the background. After many, many page turns, it persisted. The same thing happened when I went to a footnote page with tiny, dense print that did not align with the font on the original page - the tiny print showed through in the spacing between the lines. This does not happen with simple page turns and did not happen with previous versions of the firmware. BTW, I'm using a Sage.

[Cootey]

Originally Posted by geek1011

To set a few things straight here:
- I'm not sure why it would be downloading previews like that, but it's unlikely to be NickelSeries unless the series ID field is screwing with sync somehow. However, I do think we'd be hearing more about it if this was the case (and we'd also be hearing about it from Calibre users).
- NickelSeries does likely have compatibility issues with 4.35 since I've had multiple reports of crashes while importing books. I haven't had a chance to look into it yet, but it is safe to uninstall it temporarily.
- It's also not out of the question that 4.35 has bugs too, which NickelSeries just makes more likely to happen for one reason or another. Remember that Kobo did pull this release shortly after.
- I'd like to hear from anyone with/without NickelSeries working.

The other day three previews for French books from the same author suddenly downloaded onto my Kobo Clara HD, but not my Elipsa. I've been too busy to post here about it. Both devices are running this latest firmware, and neither device has NickelSeries installed. The Clara HD doesn't have NickelMenu installed either. These previews don't even show up on my library on kobo.com. I don't think NickelSeries, or Nickelmenu for that matter, are at fault.

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by Cootey

The other day three previews for French books from the same author suddenly downloaded onto my Kobo Clara HD, but not my Elipsa.

Was one of them an erotic book? I saw a post on Reddit (I think?) where a lady complained about that. In her case they were also French books that downloaded to her kid's Kobo and one was some erotic book. I wonder if they were the same ones?

[NiLuJe]

@Rand Brittain: Which kind of factory reset? You'd probably want to go the full, manual route, not the measly one from the Settings menu.

(The one from the hidden devmodeon menu will do the trick, though).

[tschucha]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Can you take your Kobo out of sideload mode and use it normally to test it?

After two days in non-sideload mode I haven't seen anything that stands out as out of the ordinary with 4.35. From a general reading perspective I don't see anything different. It hasn't hung up on me at all. If using the buttons (I've got a Sage) you sometimes have to press twice to get to the next page but this was also the case with earlier firmware. I mucked around going to different menus and changing various parameters around but couldn't break it. This was a kind of random effort on my part just to try various things out.

There is some possibility that the battery usage is worse on 4.35 but this could have been because of me trying various things that I normally wouldn't be doing. If the battery usage is worse it isn't by too much.

After this I'm pretty confident that for my type of usage anyway 4.35 is OK. If something shows up that is an obvious bug I'll post it. For now it's back to sideload mode and just normal reading.

[Rand Brittain]

Originally Posted by NiLuJe

@Rand Brittain: Which kind of factory reset? You'd probably want to go the full, manual route, not the measly one from the Settings menu.

(The one from the hidden devmodeon menu will do the trick, though).

Oh, wow, I didn't know about the manual factory reset. That did the trick! Thanks, wise internet person!