[M96][N96ML] Will I lose smooth scribbling if I upgrade the firmware in M96?

[machinogodzilla]

Hi,

I'm using N96ML which I recently upgraded to the latest firmware version 1.8.1. I'm glad to see that things are improving but there is one feature that is still lacking. It is the quality of scribbles which are plain ugly.

The thing is this has not always been the case. One of the reasons I still hold on to my old M96 is that the quality of scribbles there rocks! It's all nice and smooth, and the lines have different thickness depending on the way you make the stroke. Feels very natural.

The version of firmware I have on this device is 2014-10-13_16-36_dev_662747e and I do not intend to upgrade for fear of losing the nice scribbling (besides everything just works in this version).

See here for a comparison:



The rough lines of N96ML's scribbles makes annotating PDFs not a very enjoyable experience at all, they are hard to read and look terrible. They look as if I was drawing with a mouse in Windows' Paint program.

I'm guessing that this feature has been dropped from the firmware for whatever reason. Could anyone there with M96 and the latest firmware (currently 2017-01-15) comment on the quality of scribbling?

[Jmirko]

My M96 is on the latest firmware and yes, scribbling is not as smooth as it used to be. Too bad, because the scribble app has been gaining features and is only a few steps short of being usable for me... So I use Lecture Notes. The lag is worse, but I need the functions.

[machinogodzilla]

Booxtor is already on the case. Apparently the improvement of smoothness is scheduled for the 1.8.3 firmware release.

[machinogodzilla]

End of year and sadly no update...

Here is another picture, M96 (fw: 2014-10-13 16-36 dev 662747e) on top, N96 (fw: 2017-01-13 23-22 1.8.1 37625f3) underneath, both running Neo v1. The version of Neo v1 on my M96 is "dev 14-09-25 (1067)", the version on N96 is "22542 - 6c8138e (22542)".



Apart from that exporting notes from Neo v2 on N96 doesn't work very well. PDF exported from M96:



and from N96:





The Onyx Max 2 seems to be running an updated version of Neo (with tabs) but it doesn't seem that the line rendering has been improved...

[machinogodzilla]

Right, so Max 2 had a firmware upgrade at the beginning of the year that added pressure sensitivity (more drawings here).

This is a real deal as opposed to what M96 has which is kind of 'simulated' pressure sensitivity. It would be super cool if this 'real' pressure sensitivity was ported to N96, which currently has no sensitivity at all of any kind. reMarkable it ain't but still it is an improvement.

However, it has been a very long wait and neither the 'simulated' nor 'real' kind seems likely to be added to N96. Onyx has made available version 1.9.1 to the Chinese users in September, but the description says:

Special Note:
- Capacitive touch and infrared touch models no longer support handwriting related functions in reading. The original PDF has handwritten annotations reserved, and no longer supports the addition of new handwriting;
- capacitive touch and infrared touch models do not support the new version. Note application, retain the old note application;
- 1.9.1 data structure changes, upgrade can not be downgraded, otherwise it will not open the reader;

This doesn't sound encouraging and I personally would not risk trying, given that it may make the scribbling experience even worse by totally disabling this feature What a mess...