Firmware Update UNOFFICIAL How to Manually Update Your Kindle to 2.0.3

[Numinous]

As for getting the update the regular way, I believe that Amazon generally does this in waves, which explains why some people get it promptly, and some do not. I would be interested in knowing how exactly they determine who gets it first, or if it's simply a luck of the draw type thing.

Ironically, while I was reading through this thread, I put my K2 to sleep with the wireless on to see what would happen. A few posts later I glanced over and the kindle told me it was updating. The process took only about four minutes.

Numi

[dugbug]

Originally Posted by ChaseKR

If I'm not mistaken, doesn't the contrast issue have to do with the hardware and not the software?

The sunlight fading is likely a HW problem, but the contrast problem between the K1 and K2 is software.

K2 employs a new set of fonts or at least font rendering techniques designed to take advantage of the extra grayscale by smoothing/antialiasing the font edges. The letters appear more crisp in direct daylight, but loose a lot of contrast due to using less black pixels.

http://kindleformatting.com/blog/200...erspective.php

http://sites.google.com/site/kindle2ui/newfonts

Font clarity and size: The new 16-level grayscale screen, in addition to making images clearer, has made the Kindle font (Caelicia) show up a bit better on the screen. That actually makes the font a little bit lighter, from what I can tell, but it does not make it significantly less readable.

-d

[clarknova]

Originally Posted by dugbug

K2 employs a new set of fonts or at least font rendering techniques designed to take advantage of the extra grayscale by smoothing/antialiasing the font edges. The letters appear more crisp in direct daylight, but loose a lot of contrast due to using less black pixels.

I don't think this is correct. At least it wasn't for 2.0.1, it could be different for 2.0.3, but ted-san said earlier that it wasn't. Anyway, if you take a screenshot of a page of text and then look at it in a picture editor, you can see that both the K1 and K2 render all fonts in 2-bit greyscale. That's black, white, and two shades of grey (#555 & #AAA) for the anti-aliasing.

It is possible that because of the K2's increased palette that those two shades of grey render darker/lighter than on the K1 and this is what some people are perceiving as low contrast. I personally could never see a difference.

[ted-san]

Originally Posted by clarknova

I don't think this is correct. At least it wasn't for 2.0.1, it could be different for 2.0.3, but ted-san said earlier that it wasn't. Anyway, if you take a screenshot of a page of text and then look at it in a picture editor, you can see that both the K1 and K2 render all fonts in 2-bit greyscale. That's black, white, and two shades of grey (#555 & #AAA) for the anti-aliasing.

It is possible that because of the K2's increased palette that those two shades of grey render darker/lighter than on the K1 and this is what some people are perceiving as low contrast. I personally could never see a difference.

There are multiple issues at play.
First, as you note, the K2 and K1 use the same fonts and same gray levels *under the hood*. This last part is important. Both are rendering a four gray level font. But, from closeups of both the K1 and K2, it appears that the K2 is rendering the darkest gray levels both at, or near black. The K2 renders the second gray level as a moderate gray. The K2 is actually a more "accurate" display but it results in lower contrast characters.
Second, there's a variation in the screens among K2's. Some have a hard time getting the black pigment to the surface, others are excellent. I have two K2's - one's pretty good, one is near perfect. I believe that this is due to a difference in calibration of the electrostatic charge that moves the E-Ink particles around. Weaker charge means the force on the E-Ink is less. If you have ghosting when you see the white background of a screensaver, this is indicative of a "weak" screen.

The combination of 1 and 2, in some circumstances, leads to lower contrast characters. With excellent screens, it does in fact make the characters look finer/sharper. With others, the characters start fading into the white background.

There's a third, very important factor - eyesight. The demographics of Kindle users shows an aging population. I'm 45 and generally have good eyesight, but even with my 20:20 vision, as I tire, my vision get blurrier. This has the effect of further reducing the contrast of the characters, making it harder to read, especially in lower light situations (i.e. a typical living room in the evening).

[snakestrike]

On a completely unreleated note, on the Amazon update help page, you can download the bin file required for the update. If you have kindle 2 us wireless, can you download and use the kindle 2 free 3g bin file if you want free 3g? Anyone tried this yet?