Glo Android on Glo

[AlPe]

Alright, thanks for checking.

I guess that Android image does not match the minimum API Level set for the app (android:minSdkVersion="11", which is Android 2.3.4). I will ask my students to investigate whether we can have that app running on a Glo (i.e., if we can set android:minSdkVersion="10", which is Android 2.3.3), it would be cool!

[SyreKron]

Originally Posted by AlPe

I will ask my students to investigate whether we can have that app running on a Glo, it would be cool!

I'm imagining swarms of minions swirling at the feet of their mighty overlord.



I really need to get outside more.

[JonnyXDA]

Hey guys, sorry for recent inactivity - unfortuatly trying to juggle A-Levels, app developing, teaching android app development to younger years in school and a load of other stuff means not much free time

What's the status on a recovery.img? If we have this then we can flash custom edited ROM's - the thing stopping us at the moment is that whilst I can extract the contents of the .img files, currently there is no known way to repack such images (hence why recovery is needed to flash rom.zip files).

Also can someone do a partition block table from within android (can't remember the command off the top of my head, just google it) - will need this for later to make sure stuff gets flashed to /system partition block and not a different partition, though I suppose if a busybox binary is pushed during the rooting process we could always use busybox to mount system instead...

[Tachikoma]

Finally got mine working, if you also had trouble, here's an idiots guide as I found working from Google translated German pages wasn't as straightforward as I hoped.

You need:

2x Micro SD cards (one internal to install the Tolino firmware at least 4GB, one to root it)

The ALLESebook.de_tolino_shine_root.zip file from:

http://allesebook.de/firmware-softwa...le-play-32350/

The backup_internal_sd_shine_after_sys_recover.img.gz file from:

http://naberius.de/

Insert the card that will become the internal SD into a card reader and into your PC.

Extract the backup_internal_sd_shine_after_sys_recover.img.gz file to give you an ISO file.

Write the ISO file to the first SD card (Mac users can use Disk Utility, Unix can dd, Windows can use http://sourceforge.net/projects/win32diskimager/ or similar

Power off the Kobo, open the case according to:

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...d.php?t=209122

Remove the Kobo internal (and external if present) SD card

Insert the card, replacing the Kobo firmware SD card and power on the Kobo

The Tolino software will start (if you wrote the image properly)

Take your second SD card (can be the Kobo card if you don't have a spare, just ensure it has 268.4MB free) and copy the recovery.img file from the extracted ALLESebook.de_tolino_shine_root.zip to the root of the second SD card.

Insert this card into the Kobo/Shine and WAIT until the Kobo shuts itself down (should only take 2-3 minutes) If it takes longer than that then reboot the Kobo by holding the power slider and choosing "Neu Starten" and wait until the Kobo has shut down before proceeding.

Hold the light button down then slide the power switch until the Tolino logo appears. Release the light button and slider.

When the recovery screen appears, do nothing on the Kobo other than plug it into your computer.

On your computer go to Control Panel and Devices (or however it's named on your version of Windows) and find the Tolino entry.

Right click on it and choose Update Drivers

Do not let it search, choose Let Me Choose then scroll to the end and choose Have Disk

Point it at the ALLESebook.de_tolino_shine_root folder, go to 2_USB_Driver and click on the android_winusb.inf file. This will present you with 3 options, choose the last one (Android Composite ADB Interface)

Run the 3_install_su.bat file, press "J" (for Yes) and hopefully watch the scripts install everything. If it didn't work, then you need to re-do the recovery.img file as ADB didn't get installed.

Eventually you will get to the good old Android home screen, but there's a problem...

If you set Android to English then you get force closes. This is caused by the Button Savior app that was installed with the regular launcher and the Play Store.

Uninstall it then go to:

http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=865525

And download the SWkey62.apk file.

With the Play Store, install ES File Explorer

Once installed copy the SWkey62.apk to your Kobo (any folder) and find it with ES then install it. You may need to enable "Unknown Sources" before doing this.

That is the combination I used to get it working. I recommend a different launcher though, I am using Launcher7, which is a Windows Phone 7 clone, but the large tiles work well on this.

[slm]

Thank you for the instructions.
I had also found that Button Savior was causing a problem on each startup and had replaced it with Softkeys just as you did. A day or two later I tried reinstalling Button Savior from Google Play.
Guess what: no problems on startup!

[than.mx]

Great post, thanks for the instructions! Really appreciate that. Can't wait to try it out when my Glo arrives. How is stability and app compatibility looking so far?

[Tachikoma]

Stability is quote good, but app compatibility is iffy, I will do another post later with what apps I find work well. Amazon Kindle doesn't work yet, will see if I can get it working but it isn't hopeful yet. More interested in gettin the kobo app working but need to copy it from my phone to the glo first.

[Tachikoma]

Okay, still can't get the Kindle app to work, but Moon+ and the Kobo app (which I had to side-load) work great.

Below you will find some photos of the screen, I tried screenshots but they didn't come out so had to resort to my phone.

You can see the Launcher7 app, which I think works well here, nice big icons to select, and the SWButton app fits in nicely with the Launcher7 bar on the right to go to all apps.

Moon+ loads both itself and books quickly, and it runs perfectly, not keen on the font selections, but will work on that.

The Kobo app takes ages to load, and again ages to open a book, but once it does, it's as good as the Kobo firmware for reading. Again needs some work on the fonts, but it's fine for the most part.

One thing to make sure of is not to load anything that runs in landscape, the software can't handle it, so the touchscreen map is all messed up and you will need to restart the device. Be aware of this for example in the Play store if you are viewing screenshots of apps.

I'm going to pull apart the Tolino reader apk and see if I can translate it into English, but I won't be able to share the apk if I complete it as I don't want me or the forum to get into trouble, but I will tell people where to make changes if that is allowed. Got an 8 week old daughter though so dedicating time to this will be low on my priority list.

Photo's left to right:

Moon+ - Launcher7 Home Screen - Kobo App Home Screen - Kobo App Book Reading

[slm]

Only older versions of the Kindle app work. The link below is to one that works and has been modified slightly to make the backgrounds better for eink.

http://forum.xda-developers.com/show....php?t=2024062

In generaly the xda forum on the Nook Simple Touch is a good place to look for apps that work weill in eink and work on Android 2.1 or higher.

[myself11]

The Nook App is older than the required for Kobo, since Nook is still on Android 2.1. The Kindle app version that works on 2.3 already allows to easily change dictionaries. I can't recall the version, though.

[pbra]

Originally Posted by KevinShort

I wrote a little program to control the light some time ago. Someone would just need to write a little wrapper Android app to turn the light off from our Kobo Shine. The green LED can be turned off with some commands found in the default /etc/init.d/rcS script of the Kobo firmware. I'm sure there's some Android startup script where you could put those commands.

I see several people requesting an image of my Kobo Shine SD card. I don't mind uploading it, but the SD card I'm using is 16GB so I'm not sure if you could use that image on a smaller SD card. The actual Android installation only takes up about 4GB, I think. Let me know if you'd still like me to upload my image.

Thanks, I build your program with ndk (using : http://rathodpratik.wordpress.com/20...oid-using-ndk/ ), but, when I tried it, it does nothing at all.

Somebody with a real android knowledge may try to do something to switch off the light.

edit : I find a good software which can switch off the screen light (in fact it low it down to 1%, it's enough on my kobo to turn it off ) :
Display brightness
https://play.google.com/store/apps/d...ightness&hl=en

I find also how-to programmatically low the screen light on android : http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4...een-brightness
I don't think I will use it, Display brightness is all I need

Last thing to find is something to switch off the green led

[commandante]

Hi, having android on an e-reader is a killer feature to me as I read a lot of rss feeds (with tt-rss). I haven't bought an e-reader yet and I am wondering if android can be put on the Kobo simple touch. Is it possible? Will it be possible? If not, I will definitely buy the Kobo glo! Thanks!

[KevinShort]

Originally Posted by commandante

Hi, having android on an e-reader is a killer feature to me as I read a lot of rss feeds (with tt-rss). I haven't bought an e-reader yet and I am wondering if android can be put on the Kobo simple touch. Is it possible? Will it be possible? If not, I will definitely buy the Kobo glo! Thanks!

As far as I know, Android has not been tested on the Kobo Touch, so you probably want to get a Glo.

[haolin]

I always read books online with html5 brwoser&site，does kobo glo have a bluetooth so I can use bluetooth tethering with another android phone？

[MarekGibek]

Originally Posted by commandante

I am wondering if android can be put on the Kobo simple touch. Is it possible? Will it be possible? If not, I will definitely buy the Kobo glo! Thanks!

Yes, I confirm it works perfect on my Kobo Touch.

Original image from Tolino works almost without any changes. I had to change only one bit responsible for setting the resolution. You need to find "HW CONFIG" string in the image file and 32 bytes further there is byte with "01" value. You have to change it to "00" and that's it. "01" means 1024x768 screen, "00" is 800x600.

Android is a killer feature for me too! Although I was configuring debian desktop for Kobo for almost one year now, using Android on it is so convenient that I won't miss my previous work or even original Kobo software at all. It is superious in every way.

It even enables multitouch support out of the box - the feature that was not available on Kobo Touch at all. Zooming works with PDF. PDF viewers are blazingly fast. Buttons work. Wifi works. Mounting it as external memory works. Installing apps from Windows/Linux through adb is really easy. Finally web browsing experience is a pleasure. Keyboard supports my native language. Automatically shows and hides when needed in the way the cursor is always visible! Tons of apps with tons of settings. I can play "interactive fiction" games. Moon+ reader shows me how far it is to the end of the chapter. I can't wait to test RSS reader you mentioned. There is no part of the original software that cannot be replaced with better equivalent. Apps are very small. Easy to install and uninstall with no space wasted!

I don't understand why manufactures try to invent the wheel and rewrite features that should be supported (and are better supported) by existing OS like Android.

Cons:

- touch doesn't rotate with the screen so the landscape mode is unusable (I want to fix it sooner or later as we have kernel sources)

- 256MB of RAM on the device (~150MB free) allow you to run 2 or 3 apps at the same time only (however Android tries to hide that fact from you and if the app is correctly written it can restore its state after being killed)

- only Tolino's reader app knows how to do full screen refresh after a few pages - on other readers the screen won't be perfectly clear (it can be fixed by writing special Android app that do full screen refreshes when you are reading with other apps - but it doesn't exist yet)

Bare and rooted Android takes no more than 150 MB It can fit even on original 2GB SD card with plenty of space for apps and books (if you shrink partition sizes - Tolino image is for 4GB card).