Every firmware update makes the user experience worse, instead of better

[Ripplinger]

I have to agree with the OP. Coming to Kobo from the Sony x50 line of readers that rarely had firmware changes (they weren't needed, the firmware just worked as it should, I remember only one upgrade), I never liked the constant Kobo firmware updates. I'd probably be more accepting of that system if they actually fixed current bugs instead of introducing new bugs with each firmware and making changes that I really don't like. That's not an upgrade to me.

I'm currently using firmware 4.2.8110, the last firmware that allows me to use the old home screen with the patch installed, and I don't see me ever changing from that firmware. I really dislike the new home screen, and I've always disliked options that keep moving around instead of having consistency in where to look for what you want. The only fix that "might" make me consider upgrading is if they ever fixed search to actually search for all instances in a book instead of just the first 100. But since I probably search less often than I look at the home screen, it's unlikely that even that change will entice me to any future upgrade.

I installed games with some odd patch awhile ago, and I can still get them back by using the Kobo Utilities and selecting "Display Extra tiles on home screen", but I really don't use my reader for games. It was more a case of my curiosity if I could get them back and working, and they do.

[DNSB]

I'm one of those people who use their ereader for reading. If I want to play games, watch videos or browse the Internet, I have my laptop, iPad Pro and Nexus 7HD tablet which all live in the same bag as my ereaders.

The home page doesn't bother me either way since I only pause on the home screen long enough to get into the library view to open my next read. I am more concerned about search speed, the box for typing in the page number in the library view not having enough space to show 3 characters, etc.

What I do find is the newer firmware has fewer issues with epub2/3 ebooks which helps my reading experience and overall seems to be faster at most tasks -- processing new books as one example. Now if Vellum was banned and authors who love setting the default font size to flyspeck 6 while specifying Times New Roman as the font were burnt at the stake...

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by rcentros

It always bothered me when I had my Kobo Glo that one of my firmware upgrades just took away Chess from the Menu. What really irritated about it is that, as long as I loaded it every now and then (didn't let it roll off my home page) it was still there and I could still play it. But I let it roll off and it was gone. They decided to hide it while leaving it somewhere in the firmware. Never could quite figure that out, why keep you from using something that was still there?

One reason, I suspect, is that most of the games were not good at handling different screen resolutions. I tried several on my KA1 and the display was, shall I say, interesting for certain values of interesting. Personally, I would rather Kobo's programmers spend their time on improving the basic reading experience rather than modifying and recompiling games.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by DNSB

I'm one of those people who use their ereader for reading. If I want to play games, watch videos or browse the Internet, I have my laptop, iPad Pro and Nexus 7HD tablet which all live in the same bag as my ereaders.

At home, I have my iPhone, iPad, laptop, desktop, & Xbox One S I can use to play computer games. I have never payed any games on a Reader. I use it to read.

The home page doesn't bother me either way since I only pause on the home screen long enough to get into the library view to open my next read. I am more concerned about search speed, the box for typing in the page number in the library view not having enough space to show 3 characters, etc.

The new home screen doesn't bother me as well. I can go right from the finished book to the list of books/collections, find what I want to read and never see the home screen.

What I do find is the newer firmware has fewer issues with epub2/3 ebooks which helps my reading experience and overall seems to be faster at most tasks -- processing new books as one example. Now if Vellum was banned and authors who love setting the default font size to flyspeck 6 while specifying Times New Roman as the font were burnt at the stake...

I agree that reading experience has gotten better. One other program that should be banned is In Design. I've seen way too many eBook made with ID that are just atrocious. If you look in the CSS of these books, you'll see why they can be troublesome.

[Stevex]

The new home page is annoying but hardly a killer. As someone else said, the core experience of reading epubs got steadily better.
As I wrote elsewhere, I’m pretty sure the home page was changed to bring it into line with the Tolino.

[davidfor]

@nicolas161: I have a lot of problems with your post. It is mainly that there are inaccuracies and personal preferences listed as fact.

Firstly, I'll agree that I prefer the tiled home screen to the current one. What was displayed on it was, overall, more useful to me than the current home screen. But, there were a lot of people who hated the tiled home screen. They found it messy and they didn't understand it. They wanted something simpler, and for these people, the newer home screen is probably better.

Your screenshots of the new home screen and comments show how little you know about it. Firstly, your comment that it is filled with 50% ads when new is accurate, but the tiled home screen is as well. Yes, they could be dismissed, but do you know how many people didn't know how to do that? The big thing is that both the home screens change as they are used. Those ads disappear. When the new home screen came out, people accused Kobo of just trying to sell more books by showing more ads. But, if that was the case, they failed miserably. I see a lot less shop related links on the new home screen than I did on the tiled home screen. Just the main store link and something in the bottom right about a quarter of the time. I actually miss seeing the recommendations tile.

Your mention of Chess is problematic. You list your device as a Glo HD. Kobo never enabled games on the Glo HD. Or any of the devices released since then. If you were playing Chess on your Glo HD, it was because you hacked the device to start it. If that hack stopped working due to some other changes, you don't really have a complaint. Also, all the games have always been listed as unsupported and hence Kobo could remove them at any time.

You mention pinning the browser to the home screen. That was never a supported function. The only way it would stay on the home screen is if you kept opening it. If you pinned it by some other method, that meant you were hacking something, and that is not actually using the firmware as designed.

There are things I cannot comment on in your post. For example, the Browser is something I don't use enough to truly comment on. I mainly use it to test the downloads from a few sites, but I haven't noticed any performance degradation or seen weird reactions to taps.

Originally Posted by nicolas161

So, after three years of updates, what has Kobo improved? Maybe the ereader turns pages some miliseconds faster. Maybe pictures are drawn better on the screen.

And this is another problem I have with your post. You completely dismiss two changes that people had been been discussed. If you look through this forum, there were a lot of people complaining that page turning was a lot slower than on a Kindle. The improvements in this are welcomed by a lot of people. The image display is also something that was commented on as a welcome improvement.

And now Kobo will make more money selling ebooks after filling half our screens with advertising.

Which, as I commented above, this just isn't happening.

At first sight, nothing more.

I'll take that as a challenge and list off the top of my head the changes I can think of:

• Performance improvements everywhere. Opening the collections list and importing sideloaded books are the main ones that concern me, but page turning has improved and, based on the comments, that seems to be important to a lot people.
• Much improved top menu bar and main menu.
• Authors list.
• Series sorting.
• Filters in book lists show counts of books.
• Manage books page (delete, mark status of multiple books).
• Removal of the stupid search bar from the home screen and other places.
• Large print mode in beta section.
• Browser handles book downloads from more sites.
• Overdrive support in the Aura ONE.
• PIN Lock for sleep and power off.
• Can turn of tap for page turns.
• Turkish language support.
• Extra page turning option.
• Side swipe for brightness control.

Maybe the last three items were added before the 3.15 firmware you are using, but all the rest are much newer and do add useful function. For me, the first few almost make up for the new home screen.

And, I know people won't believe me, but Kobo have actually fixed bugs. And I'm sure they have fixed more than they have introduced.


Overall, the claim you make in the subject of this thread and your post are far to overreaching. There are plenty of improvements in the recent firmware that will improve the user experience. The change to the home screen is one that is arguable about whether it is good or bad. And there has been plenty of discussion here on this.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by Stevex

The new home page is annoying but hardly a killer. As someone else said, the core experience of reading epubs got steadily better.
As I wrote elsewhere, I’m pretty sure the home page was changed to bring it into line with the Tolino.

Not sure about that. I look at the Tolino Epos home screen. At the top I see the hamburger menu and a search icon, then 1 large tile and 2 medium tiles for books taking about half the screen with the To my books link and the Thalia.de advertising on the bottom third of the screen. And I do mean advertising. Not a link to the store but 5 recommended purchases and a link To the shop. Sadly my German is pretty non-existent. See attached screenshot.

[rcentros]

Originally Posted by DNSB

One reason, I suspect, is that most of the games were not good at handling different screen resolutions. I tried several on my KA1 and the display was, shall I say, interesting for certain values of interesting. Personally, I would rather Kobo's programmers spend their time on improving the basic reading experience rather than modifying and recompiling games.

Okay, but it worked fine on the Glo (and on the Touch) and was (is?) still there ... somewhere ... and it wasn't like Kobo was spending a lot of their development time upgrading their Chess app anyhow. I think it bothered me more that I knew it was there but I couldn't get to it. I don't play many games either, but I did like to play Chess on the Glo (and now the Touch) from time to time.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by rcentros

Okay, but it worked fine on the Glo (and on the Touch) and was (is?) still there ... somewhere ... and it wasn't like Kobo was spending a lot of their development time upgrading their Chess app anyhow. I think it bothered me more that I knew it was there but I couldn't get to it. I don't play many games either, but I did like to play Chess on the Glo (and now the Touch) from time to time.

And that's probably the point. They probably didn't need to do any work on it for a long time, but when they needed to do, the amount was more than they were willing to do. Or, maybe it was something else such as a license expired and they couldn't renew it.

Kobo did remove Chess from the beta page in one firmware and then it stopped working in a later firmware. It's likely they knew a change was coming and they weren't going to be able to support the Chess app after that. They might have had a last minute change that meant the time between these actions was more than they planned.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by DNSB

Not sure about that. I look at the Tolino Epos home screen. At the top I see the hamburger menu and a search icon, then 1 large tile and 2 medium tiles for books taking about half the screen with the To my books link and the Thalia.de advertising on the bottom third of the screen. And I do mean advertising. Not a link to the store but 5 recommended purchases and a link To the shop. Sadly my German is pretty non-existent. See attached screenshot.

I call that the bookshelf menu. A hamburger menu would have the top line be curved for the bun.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

I call that the bookshelf menu. A hamburger menu would have the top line be curved for the bun.

Nah, a hamburger menu has cheeseburgers, mushroom burgers, etc. on it. The drawer button/menu has 3 straight lines.

Hamburger
Cheeseburger
Bacon Burger
Bacon Cheeseburger
Mushroom Burger
Aussie Burger with "The Lot"
All burgers available with poutine

[compurandom]

The premise of this thread really bothers me, so I'm very glad that davidfor posted such a complete rebuttal.

Let me add that someone who is still seeing advertising tiles on their home screen hasn't used it long enough to even decide if can tolerate it, let alone like it.

I decided I didn't like the home screen and delayed upgrading until Kobo came out with their collections performance fix. Once that performance fix was in place, the new home screen became tolerable to use. After using it for a while, it totally changed my reading patterns, and now I like the new home screen and would be unhappy if you forced me to go back to the old one.

I only have a few minor gripes about the way the new home screen works, posted elsewhere.

Resistance to change is understandable, but saying that change is always bad is not right.

[Terisa de morgan]

I think I could agree if the title where "my user experience" (the OP's one, I mean) instead of "the user experience". I don't like a lot the new home screen but it's manageable with patches, but the zone for authors, showing series and subtitle right in library and sort by series are much more important and improve a lot my user experience, so I cannot agree with this rant.

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by Terisa de morgan

...showing series and subtitle right in library...

That's not new, is it? I resisted updating until a broken database forced me to. And I remember seeing series along with author and title in the library.

[ZodWallop]

Earlier, I mentioned that I think the bars are now too cluttered with duplicate information. Since I have the reader, I'll be specific now.

People use their readers differently, so if the things I mention are useful to you, please say why. I thought the <Home button seemed useless, but it was pointed out that that button changes. Good to know.

In the top bar, what is the refresh button needed for? Is it something you actually need access to while reading? I'd rather it be removed and the clock was moved back towards the center of the bar.

In the bottom bar, the <-> button gives access to the table of contents. But now right next to <-> there is a TOC button.

In the bottom bar, there is a reading settings cog button. But then at the far right i you tap ..., there is Reading Settings.

My gripes here aren't just about esthetics. By having these duplicate settings, it seems like Kobo's OS isn't well designed or thought out.