Kindle Firmware 5.17.1 imminent

[mergen3107]

One could simply compare amount of logs in 5.17.1 and FW before that by typing and searching for ;dm in the main menu search bar.

A log file will appear in the main visible root folder.

Just a quick glance will tell a lot.

[BionicGecko]

For what it’s worth, I didn’t notice a significant speed improvement after updating to my Oasis 3 to 5.17.1. Perhaps only 11th gen Kindles will benefit from this.

Edit: I’m playing more with it and I’m not so sure now, page turns do feel pretty snappy actually, although not to the level of that video showcasing the PW6. The general UI does not seem much faster however. It’s all a bit hard to say as I was mostly using KOReader lately.

[mergen3107]

Kindle Oasis 3 is missing an MTK processor, so the benefits I presume to be lower.

[j.p.s]

Originally Posted by Paperbackstash

Many users on Reddit are posting that the firmware has corrected lag issues and increased the speed of their Paperwhite 10's and some have reported same for their Oasis 3. I have not updated yet but interesting - seems like there was some bug causing slowness/lagging they may have corrected.

On the other hand, anyone with a jailbreak should avoid it.

Originally Posted by Marek

DO NOT UPDATE TO 5.17.1 it kills the hotfix and thus your jailbreak...

[Desertway]

5.71 cleared up a lot of issues on my Oasis 3. I was experiencing a lot of lag, ghosting, menu glitches and random restarts. Everything is better now.

[Gary_Berg]

I just installed the 5.17.1 update to my Kindle Oasis 10th generation. It looks to me like one small change is that the font used for the clock and location in book is larger. I wasn't looking for this so I didn't try to fix the size in my mind before updating, but I'd guess it's 25-50% larger.

[BionicGecko]

Originally Posted by Gary_Berg

I just installed the 5.17.1 update to my Kindle Oasis 10th generation. It looks to me like one small change is that the font used for the clock and location in book is larger. I wasn't looking for this so I didn't try to fix the size in my mind before updating, but I'd guess it's 25-50% larger.

Nice catch! From what I gather, it seems Amazon finally made the font bigger for the clock, location and progress indicators when the Accessibility —> Display Size setting is set to Large; it used to have no effect on those. This is pretty neat!

[Paperbackstash]

Originally Posted by hleo12

After reading all those reddit posts about lag decreasing, I decided to bit the bullet (seems like it also didn't change devices to MTP anyways), and my 10th gen basic's page turn speed is like significantly faster before this update. It was quite surprising really.

Oh no, so it made it slower when you updated?

I can't tell a difference with mine in either direction since updating. So weird.

[Paperbackstash]

Originally Posted by BionicGecko

For what it’s worth, I didn’t notice a significant speed improvement after updating to my Oasis 3 to 5.17.1. Perhaps only 11th gen Kindles will benefit from this.

Edit: I’m playing more with it and I’m not so sure now, page turns do feel pretty snappy actually, although not to the level of that video showcasing the PW6. The general UI does not seem much faster however. It’s all a bit hard to say as I was mostly using KOReader lately.

I've heard positive improvements from some Oasis 3 users but not many mentioned compared to the Paperwhite 5. I haven't really read on mine since the update so can't tell, but hopefully only positive changes of course, as you never know with these updates

[Paperbackstash]

Originally Posted by Gary_Berg

I just installed the 5.17.1 update to my Kindle Oasis 10th generation. It looks to me like one small change is that the font used for the clock and location in book is larger. I wasn't looking for this so I didn't try to fix the size in my mind before updating, but I'd guess it's 25-50% larger.

Oh, I didnt notice

But why only the Oasis and not the Paperwhite, etc, I wonder?

[Marek]

5.17.1 broke the bridge and jailbreak persistence (execution of /var/local/system/fixup has been removed) this basically means any updates that you want to do to 5.17.1 and higher need to be prepatched and if you are hit by an OTA update you are SOL.

[hleo12]

Originally Posted by Paperbackstash

Oh no, so it made it slower when you updated?

I can't tell a difference with mine in either direction since updating. So weird.

I meant after the update. I mistyped. Definitely faster than before.

[BionicGecko]

Originally Posted by Marek

5.17.1 broke the bridge and jailbreak persistence (execution of /var/local/system/fixup has been removed) this basically means any updates that you want to do to 5.17.1 and higher need to be prepatched and if you are hit by an OTA update you are SOL.

This is pretty bad news for jailbreakers. How confident are we that the current techniques for blocking OTA updates actually work? Thinking about these two:

• BinaryRenamer KUAL extension
• Router-level domain blocking

Edit: I can confirm that the router-level domain blocking as described in the link above is not reliable at this point and should not be used.

[JuniorCfm]

Originally Posted by BionicGecko

This is pretty bad news for jailbreakers. How confident are we that the current techniques for blocking OTA updates actually work? Thinking about these two:

• BinaryRenamer KUAL extension
• Router-level domain blocking

I think that filling up the storage by leaving less than 150mb free is enough to prevent a silent update from being downloaded.

[BionicGecko]

Originally Posted by JuniorCfm

I think that filling up the storage by leaving less than 150mb free is enough to prevent a silent update from being downloaded.

I did try that a while back by copying over files to my Scribe in 10MB increments; the idea was to control the remaining space by deleting one (or more) of those files whenever I wanted to add books.

It didn’t work very well unfortunately. Loading the content of the “filler” folder was very slow, making the whole thing impractical; I completely gave up on the idea after finding out one day that all the filler files had been deleted during a reboot.

But as unwieldy as it is, I believe it remains the only way to avoid updates on a non-jailbroken Kindle one wants to keep online.