Aura H2O Touchscreen problems - is my Kobo broken?

[nelsonm]

I am having some problems with my Aura H2O and the touchscreen. All the normal stuff like turning pages and opening books work just fine, but the more demanding things like highlighting words is somewhat buggy.

The screen seems to have blind-spots where pressing does not work or works poorly.

It is a real pain to expand or adjust a passage of highlighted text. When moving the cursor/marker, it simply doesn't follow my finger to another word. Sometimes it will act as if no movement was done, sometimes it will move the cursor/marker to somewhere away from where I'm pressing (and sometimes it works).

Also, especially in the top-third and bottom-third of the screen, I can press and hold down on a word for the dictionary lookup, but the screen just flashes/adjusts a few times, and the word is not marked. However, this does not happen a lot.

So - overall it seems to badly register when I press the screen.

Does anybody have a similar experience? Or should I send it to Kobo for repairs?

Thanks!

[frostschutz]

if you suspect blind spots you could use the sketch pad (in beta features) to see whether or not that's true. it lets you draw pixels on nearly the whole screen so it should be a good way to ascertain touchscreen accuracy.

I think there was a bug with highlighting text recently though, which firmware are you using, and any patches/addons?

[nelsonm]

Thanks for the tip about the sketch pad. Curiously, it seems to working perfectly. I can't find anywhere on the screen where I can't draw. Also, response time is fine and accuracy is just fine as well.

The software version is 3.19.5761. I have just sync'ed it and there doesn't seem to be newer versions.

I have no addons installed.

[davidfor]

There are some bugs with selection near the top of screen when reading epubs.

Firstly, you can't select the last word of a paragraph that continues from the previous screen. If you long press on it, whatever would happen when you tap that part of the screen happens (page turn or display the menu). The punctuation at the end of the paragraph affects this. Trying to select this word by dragging your finger, doesn't show the selection, but the menu is displayed and the annotation is saved.

Trying to select the word in the top right corner, will select it, set the dog-ear bookmark, but not display the annotations menu. Tapping somewhere on the screen will display the menu.

Adjusting the highlight has never worked well. A lot of times, I'll just start again. It seems to work better during the initial selection.

[meeera]

Highlighting can be a bit janky - I find it works better to choose the word at the end and go backward than to go forward.

Make sure your device is very clean, with a brush or canned air if necessary for the crevices where the IR sensors are. This is less of an issue with the H2O than with some other devices, but still.

You haven't taken it apart and put it back together, have you? If all else fails, yes, see if Kobo support or returning it to your place of purchase can help.

[nelsonm]

Thank you for the replies!

No, I haven't tried to take it apart or anything. I will try to give it a good cleaning on the outside.

It sounds like you guys are having the same issues as me. I am also experimenting with stuff like highlighting the last word first and so on.

Maybe that is just the way the H2O works. It kinda sucks because in some (study) books I do lots of highlighting and find myself wasting a lot of time doing it.

[meeera]

Originally Posted by nelsonm

No, I haven't tried to take it apart or anything. I will try to give it a good cleaning on the outside.

It sounds like you guys are having the same issues as me. I am also experimenting with stuff like highlighting the last word first and so on.

Maybe that is just the way the H2O works. It kinda sucks because in some (study) books I do lots of highlighting and find myself wasting a lot of time doing it.

All the devices have their strengths and weaknesses - Kindles are smoother with highlighting, and tablets generally smoother again. Honestly for heavy highlighting and annotation work/study I'd generally suggest a tablet (which also offers excellent PDF management), but you use what you have.

Another thing to try is to use the Extended driver to convert to kepub format, if you're using epubs.