Yotaphone 2 Usage, Tips & Hints

[Terisa de morgan]

Originally Posted by trocchietto

AFAIK the choice from YP Engineers was to avoid flushing and maintain high responsivness, so can be a double weapon to use this trick. Especially because animations should be disabled if you use the 16 shades, but it is just my opinion

Animation is not a problem for me (novels don't use to move a lot , and I'm not going to use it for other thing....), but I'm afraid it's going to stay as it is because I'm not interested in rooting it.

[kacir]

Originally Posted by Terisa de morgan

... and I'm not going to use it for other thing....), but I'm afraid it's going to stay as it is because I'm not interested in rooting it.

I have received a letter that my Yotaphone has arrived and I have to contact customs office with proof purchase and other info in order to pay VAT/customs/fee for having the goods impounded. The fee from our post office is significantly higher than postage all the way from China!
I am *SO* pissed off at this moment

As soon as I get the phone into my hands I will have a look. I prefer not to root my phone, so I will try to find a way to set it up without rooting and with the least amount of hassle.

[Sweetpea]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

My new phone arrived at the weekend, and is now installed in its bumper case (which is rather shiny, so I'm on the lookout for something with a matt finish) and with a screen protector (although I'm still waiting for the thicker, glass, screen protector to arrive.)

Now I just need to find time to customise it and check it out properly. I expect my Voyage to stay at my bedside again shortly.

My next thing to do is to try out kacir's hint from the other thread:

"You do not have to use the build-in app for reading the books, you can also use your favorite Android app and switch on display mirroring. But when you do that, you should modify a config file telling Yotaphone to switch on 16shades graphics instead of default B/W for mirroring mode for that particular app.
16 shade mode has refresh frequency 2Hz and B/W has 8Hz
See http://forum.xda-developers.com/yotaphone-one/general/how-to-read-manga-e-ink-display-16-gray-t3474189"

It doesn't work on my device. Apparently I have a version 4.4 (don't ask me for names, I won't know them), even though the site said 5.0. Not sure if I will upgrade to 5 or not...

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by Sweetpea

It doesn't work on my device. Apparently I have a version 4.4 (don't ask me for names, I won't know them), even though the site said 5.0. Not sure if I will upgrade to 5 or not...

I'm pondering updating to 5.0. I might experiment on the one with a broken screen. When I find time!

At the moment, I'm using it happily as phone and ebook reader on my commute. One device to carry instead of two, which was the point.

[Sweetpea]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

I'm pondering updating to 5.0. I might experiment on the one with a broken screen. When I find time!

At the moment, I'm using it happily as phone and ebook reader on my commute. One device to carry instead of two, which was the point.

Mine won't leave the house until I get that package from the UK. And it works already perfect as it is for my heat camera. It's a lot lighter than my tablet!

Oh, and I have the perfect cover for the e-ink screen active now

[fozzedout]

Originally Posted by Sweetpea

Oh, and I have the perfect cover for the e-ink screen active now

"I like the cover. 'Don't Panic'. It's the first helpful or intelligible thing anyone's said to me all day"

attached mine

[kacir]

Originally Posted by kacir

... As soon as I get the phone into my hands I will have a look.

The phone is finally in my hands. I have used it for one day with the default firmware it arrived with. This firmware has no option to upgrade Over The Air (ota). So I went to xda-developers site and read the thread about updating.
I found a windows 7 computer, downloaded the yotaphone2_flasher.exe and installed it. I started the update tool and downloaded the newest Russian firmware 124. It downloaded about gigabyte zip file. I do not exact size, because the tool automatically unzips it and deletes the archive.
In the meanwhile I have charged the phone.
I have switched off the phone and switched it on holding power and volume down. A small white text "downlading" appears on the screen.
I have connected the phone in this mode using USB cable. Windows tried to download an USB driver and fortunately failed. So I have manually installed the drivers from yotaphone flasher directory.
After installation of drivers I have run the flasher again and it started to write images to phone memory.
I was very apprehensive, because the PC looked as it was frozen while flashing the third image. I have let it work for about 20-30 minutes and it finished successfully. The phone restarted itself and finished update.
I have let it sit and it automatically updated itself over the air to even newer version (134 I think).

In the original Android 4.4.3 firmware the Yota Reader was *VERY* spartan. It did not even support landscape screen orientation, which is a dealbreaker for me on the screen that is 57mm wide and 103mm tall.

The setting of the e-ink screen to 16gray scale for certain ebook reading apps as described at http://forum.xda-developers.com/yota...-gray-t3474189 wasn't working on the 4.4.3 Android(*), I am going to investigate how to make it work under 5.0.

(*) I am not even sure it was needed. The text on the e-ink looked OK in other reading apps on the old firmware, on the new firmware the text doesn't look good, so perhaps the 1 bit and 4 bit graphics is only in the newest firmware.

Ok. Here it is,
http://forum.xda-developers.com/yota...1-0-0-t3326208
Program for modification of /storage/emulated/0/TitaniumManager/mirroring.cfg
Works nice under Lolipop. No manual editing necessary.

[Sweetpea]

I still haven't dared to install a new version Too afraid I'll brick it!

[pdurrant]

I got this glass front screen protector, that installed well. With the bumper case it looks like it'll provide good protection for the front screen, better than the thin plastic ones I also tried.

I also tried de-glossing my bumper case with a scotchbrite P360 finishing pad I happened to have around. It worked OK, but it might be that the P1500 would give an even better finish.

[kacir]

Originally Posted by Sweetpea

I still haven't dared to install a new version Too afraid I'll brick it!

I was *very* apprehensive.
Especially when the [rather old] computer with Windows 7 seemingly froze while flashing.
There are a few people on the XDA-developers forum that have bricked their phones during flashing and were able to reflash using fastboot. Fastboot is used even during the "normal" firmware update from PC.
Some people had to reflash using commandline with special parameters, as their PC did not have enough RAM and thus failed (and bricked the phone) during the flash.

But I was reading about cool features that were present in Lolipop firmware so I took the risk. And I am not afraid to use commandline Android tools.

I wanted to post my experience so when you do attempt to flash you won't spend agonizing 30 of so minutes looking at hopelessly frozen PC and fearing the worst as it is flashing the third image.

[Terisa de morgan]

Which are the advantages of lollipop in this phone, if you don't mind explain, kacir?

[crimsonsnow]

Hmm, I was already quite interested in the phone before, now it's in 100 GBP range, I am more tempted to get one, decision, decision.

I've never bought something from outside of UK before, UK people, after VAT the total should be about 110 GBP? Not a lot of hassle from HMRC?

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by crimsonsnow

Hmm, I was already quite interested in the phone before, now it's in 100 GBP range, I am more tempted to get one, decision, decision.

I've never bought something from outside of UK before, UK people, after VAT the total should be about 110 GBP? Not a lot of hassle from HMRC?

I bought mine from Gearbest. The price listed was the price I paid, and there were no import charges.

[pdurrant]

I did buy a rear screen protector, this one. It is a wet-application screen protector, which I hadn't come across.

But I immediately removed it after applying it, as it had a shiny reflective surface. Just what I don't want on my E-Ink screen!

It looks like I'll just have to live without a rear screen protector.

[Sweetpea]

Originally Posted by kacir

I was *very* apprehensive.
Especially when the [rather old] computer with Windows 7 seemingly froze while flashing.
There are a few people on the XDA-developers forum that have bricked their phones during flashing and were able to reflash using fastboot. Fastboot is used even during the "normal" firmware update from PC.
Some people had to reflash using commandline with special parameters, as their PC did not have enough RAM and thus failed (and bricked the phone) during the flash.

But I was reading about cool features that were present in Lolipop firmware so I took the risk. And I am not afraid to use commandline Android tools.

I wanted to post my experience so when you do attempt to flash you won't spend agonizing 30 of so minutes looking at hopelessly frozen PC and fearing the worst as it is flashing the third image.

And that's why I really shouldn't do it. I simply don't have enough experience with Android... I flashed a custom rom on my HTC Flyer, following a very detailed description, and I managed to root my Galaxy Note 8.0, again, following a very detailed description. Both of those updates were almost fool-proof.

But tinkering with a device where even at XDA people have managed to brick it, not sure I'll take the chance....

Originally Posted by Terisa de morgan

Which are the advantages of lollipop in this phone, if you don't mind explain, kacir?

Yes, I'm curious as well...