Boyue T63/Shine update (sort of)

[downeaster59]

Originally Posted by parkher

No, the password is correct. It is "www.lectoreselectronicos.com"
Because of the dots in it better to include it inside double quotes, if a command line switch is used.

However, the file is rar, not zip. Perhaps you renamed it to .zip and somehow it is causing the problem? Try naming it .rar

The file to try is cr3.0.57-15-51-1-eink-jotas.apk
The other two are for Nook and for T1/T2. Still, they might be worth a try if there are problems with the first one, such as buttons not working in settings or in the file manager, etc.

Yes, I figured out the "rar" bit just before your post came! The password worked perfectly once I had it saved as a rar file.

I have the eInk apk installed. Yes, the physical buttons work, but the opposite of what you'd expect. Left button turns the page forward; right button turns the page back. The app seems to work fine on my T63 after a few minutes of playing with it.

Edit: Also, when you select a book in your library, CoolReader will appear in the list of reader apps to choose from. You can select it as your default reader.

[stangri]

UPDATE: fixed both side buttons to do the page_down. I've also made the device wake on either of side buttons. It's a bit of the hack, tho. Unzip the rk29-keypad.kl from the attached zip file and then plug your T63 to a computer (with adb installed), unmount T63's internal card and from the same directory as the rk29-keypad.kl file do:

adb push rk29-keypad.kl /sdcard/
adb shell cp /sdcard/rk29-keypad.kl /system/usr/keylayout/

If you change the side buttons assignment from the settings, it *should* undo the change.

PS. I've tried using button remapper from XDA, but it didn't list the 104/109 codes at all.

PPS. Turns out wake on side buttons is a hit or miss.

[stangri]

Originally Posted by carltonbp

Mines dark at the top and light at the bottom too.

Thanks for replying. What a bummer. Considering how much it costs to return the device, now I'm not sure if I should just send it back for refund or try a replacement or keep the one I have. If it wasn't for the uneven backlight it's perfect.

Originally Posted by carltonbp

I'd like a shortcut for turning on the light, screen refresh and for switching buttons around, I turned over in bed last night and had to go into settings.

One way of doing that thru paid Button Savior was posted above. I do however like the ability of Play Books to adjust the brightness without leaving the app (however e-ink unfriendly it gets if you push slider to the left).

[downeaster59]

Originally Posted by stangri

Thanks for replying. What a bummer. Considering how much it costs to return the device, now I'm not sure if I should just send it back for refund or try a replacement or keep the one I have. If it wasn't for the uneven backlight it's perfect.



One way of doing that thru paid Button Savior was posted above. I do however like the ability of Play Books to adjust the brightness without leaving the app (however e-ink unfriendly it gets if you push slider to the left).

Mine is also slightly darker at the top. Every person I have contacted who has a T63 says the same. The effect is more noticeable in some apps than others. Maybe I'm used to it, but I scarcely notice it when reading.

Besides button savior, check out Swapps. It's a side launcher that you only see when you swipe from left side (or any side). You can add your favorite apps, the brightness control, and many other functions. I haven't tried it yet on the T63, but it worked well on my previous e-ink devices.

Edit: Just installed Swapps and added the Brightness control (found in applications). Works like a charm!

[carltonbp]

Thanks, I haven't rooted mine. I'll have to look into it, do you have a link as a starting point. I've rooted tablet but never my ereaders?

[Purple Lady]

Originally Posted by stangri

After spending some more time with T63, some conclusions from the long-time Kindle user.

The screen backlighting isn't perfect/uniform. It's visibly darker at the top and visibly brighter at the bottom of the screen. Maybe I was spoiled by Kindle Voyage which is (screen-wise) the most perfect e-ink reader I've ever had. If all you ladies and gentlemen do not have this problem, I'd ship mine back to BG (it's very pricey from Canada) for replacement -- let me know please.

The biggest reason I got the Android-based e-ink reader was Play Books, Overdrive and WiFi sync. They all work. My local library has huge queues for the popular ebooks so I haven't actually read anything with Overdrive yet, but Play Books works very well. With animations disabled it's lightning-quick on page turns.

All is not perfect however -- Play Books hijacks the screen brightness control so the built-in brightness control does nothing while in Play Books, on the other hand you can (to an extent) control brightness from inside the Play Books app.

Also, Play Books dims, but doesn't hide the system bar and disabling it in settings leaves me without the home button. I know people love button savior here, I find its icons ugly on T63 and prefer the full!screen, however the latter keeps crashing all the time, especially if you try to use its system bar hiding.

What I find most annoying tho is that I couldn't figure out the way to (hack) both physical side buttons to turn page down. I very rarely need to go back (and if I do, I'd swipe the screen), it would be great if I could use either left or right buttons to flip page down.

It's also quite annoying (although not catastrophic) that when you close the case the T63 doesn't sleep. I got so used to that with Voyage, why didn't Boyue think of implementing the same feature? It's not like magnets are prohibitively expensive after all.

Finally, the shutdown wallpaper has Chinese on it and I wish I could change it just like the sleep wallpaper (mine is attached).


Thank you for replying! Now that I've discovered Play Books manages brightness on its own, it's not as important to me but still -- I don't think I have brightness in the app drawer as is. Did you install additional app? This one: https://play.google.com/store/apps/d...lin.brightness or something else?

I'm using Nova launcher - you can see more apps that way. Play books has a setting for brightness control, you need to set it to auto. It may be in font selection area.

Sent from my T62+ using Tapatalk

[stangri]

Originally Posted by carltonbp

Thanks, I haven't rooted mine. I'll have to look into it, do you have a link as a starting point. I've rooted tablet but never my ereaders?

There's a ZIP file in the tips & tricks post I think with the batch-file for Windows users to root your T63 and/or install Play Store on it.

Bootloader isn't locked on T63 and with a simple adb command you can mount /system partition for writing, so "rooting" process involves copying a su binary to /system and installing a superuser apk.

[stangri]

Originally Posted by Purple Lady

I'm using Nova launcher - you can see more apps that way. Play books has a setting for brightness control, you need to set it to auto. It may be in font selection area.

Ah, right, I forgot the stock "launcher/app drawer" doesn't show all the apps. Thanks for reminder. For now I'm happy with using Play Books to manage brightness.

[parkher]

Originally Posted by downeaster59

Yes, the physical buttons work, but the opposite of what you'd expect. Left button turns the page forward; right button turns the page back.

Cool Reader allows to remap the buttons. I actually have next and previous buttons swapped.
You can assign various actions to the buttons for single press, for double press and for long press. So 3 actions for each button.

But please test if the buttons also work in the file manager and in settings.
Go to the list of your books and try to go through it page-by-page. Or in settings.
For example, if you want to swap the next and previous buttons you have to: - go to settings
- then to the tab with the picture of the hand with the finger
- then to "Key actions"
- then to, let's say, "Prev button"
and then you have a long list of actions to assign to it. Try navigating through them with next / prev buttons. Do they work there?
You don't have to go so deep, you can probably test the buttons in settings at the top level - certainly in landscape, not sure about portrait.


As to selecting Cool Reader as the default reader.
I use a different approach. I just launch Cool Reader and never leave it
So I select a book while already in Cool Reader and not what reader to open for a book.
I often use "Recent books" list. A long tap on a book in that list opens a list of options including one to go directly to the folder of the book. I find it very useful for opening new books: if they are in the same series and thus in the same folder, or just in folders close to navigate to.

My main concern is this: how to switch off the indexing of the books by the native software (because it takes a long time and cannot even handle too many books). If you use Cool Reader this way - you don't need anything else to handle the library. On linux devices, using hidden folder usually works fine: if I make the root of my library folder structure a hidden folder, no indexing is performed.
So I have all my books in a folder
.BOOKZ
The dot solves the problem.
But on the android reader T2 a different hack was implemented, requiring a special flag file to be present in the book root directory.
However, the initial dot could work with android as well because the dot also makes the folder hidden.

Could you test this: put some books into such a hidden folder and see if those books are detected and included into your book collection (or whatever it is).
They should not be detected, but still accessible from Cool Reader - that would be perfect.

And if you could test yet another thing: is the external memory card accessible from Cool Reader?
I am asking this because some time ago there was an issue reported with the official Cool Reader (not from jotas) - the external card was not accessible from android 4.x (or from some more specific 4.x.x version) but everything was OK with earlier android versions.
I don't know if it was fixed and if Cool Reader by jotas was affected at all.
Perhaps it was an issue with android itself.
Perhaps the external card needs to be properly mounted first or something.
It works fine with my android 2.1 T2

[carltonbp]

THanks, I found this page which Downeaster says he used the T6x but then the bottom poster has created a bit of a mess. https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...3+root&page=26

I'll figure it out and make a decision.

[downeaster59]

Originally Posted by parkher

Cool Reader allows to remap the buttons. I actually have next and previous buttons swapped.
You can assign various actions to the buttons for single press, for double press and for long press. So 3 actions for each button.

But please test if the buttons also work in the file manager and in settings.
Go to the list of your books and try to go through it page-by-page. Or in settings.
For example, if you want to swap the next and previous buttons you have to: - go to settings
- then to the tab with the picture of the hand with the finger
- then to "Key actions"
- then to, let's say, "Prev button"
and then you have a long list of actions to assign to it. Try navigating through them with next / prev buttons. Do they work there?
You don't have to go so deep, you can probably test the buttons in settings at the top level - certainly in landscape, not sure about portrait.


As to selecting Cool Reader as the default reader.
I use a different approach. I just launch Cool Reader and never leave it
So I select a book while already in Cool Reader and not what reader to open for a book.
I often use "Recent books" list. A long tap on a book in that list opens a list of options including one to go directly to the folder of the book. I find it very useful for opening new books: if they are in the same series and thus in the same folder, or just in folders close to navigate to.

My main concern is this: how to switch off the indexing of the books by the native software (because it takes a long time and cannot even handle too many books). If you use Cool Reader this way - you don't need anything else to handle the library. On linux devices, using hidden folder usually works fine: if I make the root of my library folder structure a hidden folder, no indexing is performed.
So I have all my books in a folder
.BOOKZ
The dot solves the problem.
But on the android reader T2 a different hack was implemented, requiring a special flag file to be present in the book root directory.
However, the initial dot could work with android as well because the dot also makes the folder hidden.

Could you test this: put some books into such a hidden folder and see if those books are detected and included into your book collection (or whatever it is).
They should not be detected, but still accessible from Cool Reader - that would be perfect.

And if you could test yet another thing: is the external memory card accessible from Cool Reader?
I am asking this because some time ago there was an issue reported with the official Cool Reader (not from jotas) - the external card was not accessible from android 4.x (or from some more specific 4.x.x version) but everything was OK with earlier android versions.
I don't know if it was fixed and if Cool Reader by jotas was affected at all.
Perhaps it was an issue with android itself.
Perhaps the external card needs to be properly mounted first or something.
It works fine with my android 2.1 T2

Hi! Sure, I'll test all these things for you. It will also give me a good intro to what Cool Reader can do, and I can see if I like it. No promises, but I should be able to do the testing tonight or tomorrow.

[downeaster59]

Originally Posted by carltonbp

THanks, I found this page which Downeaster says he used the T6x but then the bottom poster has created a bit of a mess. https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...3+root&page=26

I'll figure it out and make a decision.

YMMV, of course. But the T6x worked smoothly for me with two devices I used it with. The bottom poster in your link edited the build.prop file manually, it seems. This has nothing to do with T6x.

[downeaster59]

@parkher: Okay, here are the results of my tests of CoolReader (jotas) on my T63. If I missed anything, sorry! Please let me know!

1) Do the physical buttons work in file manager and in settings?

Yes to both. I can scroll through my book collection page-by-page with the physical buttons. I can also scroll up or down a list of folders with the buttons.

2) Switching off the indexing of books by the native (Boyue, I presume) software:

I find that if I don't go into Books, the indexing doesn't happen. If I do, the indexing is buggy. So I don't. As long as you never go there, it shouldn't be an issue.

3) Can CoolReader see/access books in hidden folders (like .Bookz)?

No. CoolReader doesn't show hidden folders at all in its list of folders. I added .Books to the internal and to the external SD cards. Neither show up in the Cool Reader folder list. Nor do any hidden folders (like .android) that are already on my device.

4) Is the external SD accessible through Cool Reader?

Yes. Except for hidden folders, CoolReader will show folders on the external SD.

Hope this helps!

[parkher]

downeaster59, thanks a lot!

Everything seems to be great. I guess, I will be ordering T63 before the promotional price period ends. Their ploy works with me
I think it will eventually appear rebranded as an InkBook @ inkbook.eu but who knows when.

I am a bit surprised that hidden folders are not visible from CR, but that is a different CR version - they are visible in linux CR that comes as a part of the chess package. I should have tested on my T2 first before asking you...
However, if the indexing needs to be explicitly initiated - that does not matter as I will not do it.
So far my experience with other devices was as follows:
after I upload some books (I guess they call it sideloading) and disconnect the usb cable from PC, the device stalls for a long time while it is indexing books or checking what changed in the library, etc.
I understood that does not happen with T63.

So CR is working fine. But I am afraid there is no dictionary software that would support the buttons. CR can be integrated with dictionaries, but all the dictionaries I ever tried require scrolling. I am using GoldenDict as the best of the bad. Maybe something changed recently, though.

[downeaster59]

Originally Posted by parkher

downeaster59, thanks a lot!

Everything seems to be great. I guess, I will be ordering T63 before the promotional price period ends. Their ploy works with me
I think it will eventually appear rebranded as an InkBook @ inkbook.eu but who knows when.

I am a bit surprised that hidden folders are not visible from CR, but that is a different CR version - they are visible in linux CR that comes as a part of the chess package. I should have tested on my T2 first before asking you...
However, if the indexing needs to be explicitly initiated - that does not matter as I will not do it.
So far my experience with other devices was as follows:
after I upload some books (I guess they call it sideloading) and disconnect the usb cable from PC, the device stalls for a long time while it is indexing books or checking what changed in the library, etc.
I understood that does not happen with T63.

So CR is working fine. But I am afraid there is no dictionary software that would support the buttons. CR can be integrated with dictionaries, but all the dictionaries I ever tried require scrolling. I am using GoldenDict as the best of the bad. Maybe something changed recently, though.

If you do order the T63, I hope it works out well for you, and that you will enjoy using it. Overall, I am very pleased with mine.

When I sideload books, I don't get that stalling at all.