Book repeatedly failing to download on iOS

[Cameronpaterson]

Hello forumites

I have a hopefully simple problem: yesterday I bought the following book in the Kobo store:

http://www.kobobooks.com/ebook/Vanis...iDZSD6lnhQ&r=1

However, this morning I seem unable to download it into the iOS app on either my iPhone or iPad. On both devices the download chugs along painfully for a while before hanging with the unambiguous but unhelpful error "download failed". Anyone got any ideas?

[Sharkus]

Thanks for the link. Let me have a look at this.

[Cameronpaterson]

Originally Posted by Sharkus

Thanks for the link. Let me have a look at this.

Thanks Sharkus. Looking forward to hearing back from you

[Sharkus]

What version of the app are you running, v5.4.1 being the latest. Plus what exact device and iOS version are the devices running?

Is it the fully purchased version of the book or a preview. I'm guessing preview as you say it chugs along for a time, and it is an 84MB sized epub.

I've tried the full copy of the book on my setup here and it download without any problems at all.

Can you please tap and hold on the book when it is in the download failed state and then select the "Delete Book" option. Then go to the website and look at the purchased or trash lists and see if the book is there. It should be on one of those lists, at which point, select the book and use the Bookmark / Undelete option to get it added back to your I'm Reading list. Then refresh the library on your device and see if the book then downloads.

[Cameronpaterson]

Thanks for the rapid follow up, Sharkus and my apologies for the delay in getting back to you.
Firstly, to answer your questions, I am using the latest version of the app (i.e. 5.4.1) and the latest version of the iOS (i.e. 5.1). It is the full version of the book.
Your suggestion (eventually) worked for the app on my iPhone 4S. The book downloaded successfully on the second attempt, albeit unusually slowly. However my iPad (3/ 2012 model) is continuing to cause problems. The download failed again when I tried your suggestion, so I then tried deleting the entire Kobo and reinstalling that, redownloading the last five books in my library, including 'Vanished Kingdoms'. This initially appeared to have worked, with the download completing (albeit again, much more slowly than normal). Unfortunately, as soon as the download completed, it immediately began again from the beginning. Grrr! This suggests to me that there is perhaps a problem with the source file which is causing some downloads to fail. Do you have any further suggestions?

[Sharkus]

Thanks for the info, that matches the setup I was testing with, iOS version and Device Type should not make any difference to this type of problem, but it's worth checking.

How much disk space is free on the device? As said, the book appears to be 84MB in size. Typically we do report when disk space is getting low, but it's worth checking this.

Were you on wifi or a cellular data connection when you were trying to download the book?

[Cameronpaterson]

Originally Posted by Sharkus

Thanks for the info, that matches the setup I was testing with, iOS version and Device Type should not make any difference to this type of problem, but it's worth checking.

How much disk space is free on the device? As said, the book appears to be 84MB in size. Typically we do report when disk space is getting low, but it's worth checking this.

Were you on wifi or a cellular data connection when you were trying to download the book?

Thanks again for the speedy follow-ups last week and apologies for the delay in responding. It was a wifi connection and I had sufficient space. I did eventually manage to download the book to both my iPhone and iPad (although it took several attempts on the iPad as the connection seemed to drop randomly sometimes when the screen went into energy saving mode). I even managed to open and start reading the book this morning. However, when I then switched over to another book in my library, 'Vanished Kingdoms' spontaneously began to download again!
The only logical conclusion is that there is some kind of bug in the current Kobo app which causes flakey behaviour with unusually large, illustration-rich books like this one. Customer Services certainly implied this (without specifically saying so), suggesting that I hang on till the new app update is released - allegedly next week. I certainly hope the update does fix this issue as I am getting very tired of it now.

[Sharkus]

That is rather odd. Once we have downloaded the book we don't need to do it again. We won't let you read the book until we have it all, so it's not as if it's a partial download.

The app can already handle large file sizes, though depending on your network connectivity, it can take some time to download the file. Typically we will try the download three times, then report Download Failed, at which point you can tap on the book to initiate the download again (we then do the three attempts thing again)

I'd like to think CS was indicating that iOS does not yet support fixed layout content, for example comics, in the same way that VOX does. Certainly we are not aware of any issues with downloading large files via the app.

I have been testing the upcoming release with large files which contain rich content and have not seen any download issues, unless I'm on a weak wifi connection, in which case they seem to download slowly, but they do successfully download.

[Cameronpaterson]

Originally Posted by Sharkus

That is rather odd. Once we have downloaded the book we don't need to do it again. We won't let you read the book until we have it all, so it's not as if it's a partial download.

The app can already handle large file sizes, though depending on your network connectivity, it can take some time to download the file. Typically we will try the download three times, then report Download Failed, at which point you can tap on the book to initiate the download again (we then do the three attempts thing again)

I'd like to think CS was indicating that iOS does not yet support fixed layout content, for example comics, in the same way that VOX does. Certainly we are not aware of any issues with downloading large files via the app.

I have been testing the upcoming release with large files which contain rich content and have not seen any download issues, unless I'm on a weak wifi connection, in which case they seem to download slowly, but they do successfully download.

Cheers Sharkus. Just noticed that I keep apologising to you! Not sure why
Anywayz, we'll have to see what happens with the update. If it doesn't fix the issue, then we're back to conclusion A, which was that the book itself has an issue and I shall be pressing CS for a refund.