Is Kindle Innovation Done?

[haertig]

Originally Posted by Braid

As for the view that too much contrast is harsh, I am puzzled. You're saying that a brand new print of a paperback will have dark black text and this will be 'harsh' for you, and you'll prefer to choose an older, more faded print?

I am talking electronic contrast. An eInk screen, an LCD screen, an OLED screen. The harshness is usually a combination of excessive contrast AND excessive brightness, although either of these taken to the extreme individually is not good. I don't think current eInk screens have excessive contrast. Other screen technologies that you find on cellphones, tablets, computers, etc. certainly can. If you turn the reading light up to max intensity on an eInk device it can seem like too much contrast, but really that is a brightness problem, not a contrast problem.

Books can't really be "too harsh". I guess maybe, if you had super white bleached paper and you were trying to read print on that under a blazing equatorial sun. But that's an artificial example.

[Braid]

Originally Posted by haertig

Books can't really be "too harsh". I guess maybe, if you had super white bleached paper and you were trying to read print on that under a blazing equatorial sun. But that's an artificial example.

Yes, I agree. And since I was referring to improving eink screens to be on par with paper, which can have more than 10x the contrast ratio of a Kindle/Kobo, I don't think having too much contrast will be a worry anytime soon.

Too much brightness, or too much contrast in an LCD or OLED screen? Perhaps; I was talking about eink.

[hobnail]

Originally Posted by Ridcully

I don't think the UI is gonna add any more features.

You don't realize what the UI is missing until you've used a Kobo or PocketBook.

[Ridcully]

Sure I do, I just mean Amazon isn't going to do anything about it :/

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by Braid

I find the contrast fine on my ereaders. More contrast would be nice.

As for the view that e-readers have higher contrast than paperbacks, I believe this is false. E-ink screens go up to 15:1, whereas paperback books are around 50:1.

I know that technically paper has higher contrast, but visually most paper books don't. And very few paperbacks here have dark black text, even brand new. The print was already sort of faded when I bought them.

[Deskisamess]

The Kobo Glo HD I used for a year did have more settings etc. But I ended up rarely use most of them. For flat out reading, it was no better or worse than most of the front lit Kindles I've owned.

When my vision issues make reading more of a challenge, a wider line spacing works for me more effectively than using a larger font. More white space=better contrast, at least for me.

Most of my "complaints" about e-readers stem from poor formatting of the book itself. It's not a device problem, unless devices could be developed to fix those issues with a book already on the device. Mostly I'm talking about huge white spaces between chapters or paragraphs, or off balanced margins, OCR that hasn't been proofread, huge drop caps, etc.

[hobnail]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

I know that technically paper has higher contrast, but visually most paper books don't. And very few paperbacks here have dark black text, even brand new. The print was already sort of faded when I bought them.

Or sometimes even worse is when it's been copied from an original print and the edges of the letters are sort of grungy. Or with real metal printing the edges of the letters get worn down. Years ago I bought a hardback of The Once and Future King by T. H. White from Amazon and the bad printing was very distracting.

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by Deskisamess

The Kobo Glo HD I used for a year did have more settings etc. But I ended up rarely use most of them. For flat out reading, it was no better or worse than most of the front lit Kindles I've owned.

When my vision issues make reading more of a challenge, a wider line spacing works for me more effectively than using a larger font. More white space=better contrast, at least for me.

Most of my "complaints" about e-readers stem from poor formatting of the book itself. It's not a device problem, unless devices could be developed to fix those issues with a book already on the device. Mostly I'm talking about huge white spaces between chapters or paragraphs, or off balanced margins, OCR that hasn't been proofread, huge drop caps, etc.

I have both the newest Kobo and the newest Kindle. Yes, Kobo has more settings and you can patch it to customize it even more. I patch my Kobo rather heavily and it's fun, but the reading experience itself is indeed not that much different from the Kindle (unless you prefer ultra-narrow margins and line-height, which I don't). I can read either on my Kobo or on my Kindles and be completely satisfied.

As to poor formatting, I can't stand that at all and fix all my ebooks in the Calibre editor, else I would not be able to read many of them due to extreme levels of irritation . It's bothersome, but at least it can be done and the results are worth the fuss.

[SusanReads]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

(unless you prefer ultra-narrow margins and line-height, which I don't).

And even that is fixable with Calibre. I edit all my books so I get negative margins on my Kindle and for me that's definitely worth the fuss.

[JSWolf]

But one big thing that's very much lacking in the Kindle software is eBook management. There is almost none. Kobo has rather good eBook management.

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

But one big thing that's very much lacking in the Kindle software is eBook management. There is almost none. Kobo has rather good eBook management.

Yes, Kobo has better management, but that's not important for everyone. I manage my ebooks in Calibre and not on my ereaders. I do use shelves and series on my Kobo, because it's easy to set them up, but it's not a feature I consider indispensable. I can use just as happily a Calibre-generated catalog to find my next read.

It all depends on what you are used to, I guess. I expect people who have used mostly Kobos find it hard to manage their ebooks in other ways, because Kobo makes it almost effortless. But that doesn't mean other ways don't exist.

[SusanReads]

I have separate folders on my laptop where I organize all my books. When I have a new Kindle I side-load my books per folder and put them in the right collection.

It's not that much work for me, but I do have to admit that I have hundreds of books, not thousands.

So ebook management is not that important to me.

[NullNix]

I just use searches and alphabetical ordering and looking around the locus of a search hit. This is actually better than a bookshelf would be, because you can sort on more than one thing and resort in a fraction of a second rather than having to spend several days reshuffling everything. Combine that with full text search across all books and honestly I hardly even use categories any more: they're even redundant for grouping series, unless the series is written by multiple authors.

Everyone talking about "better organization" seems to think that the Kindle is competing against a full-blown relational database or something. It's not. It's competing against physical bookshelves, and there, there is no contest, except that your eyes can scan physical bookshelves quite fast because the field of view is much bigger than a Kindle screen. (But it still sometimes takes me ten minutes to find a book on my bookshelves, even though they're sorted by author. It never takes me remotely that long on the Kindle.)

[haertig]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

But one big thing that's very much lacking in the Kindle software is eBook management. There is almost none. Kobo has rather good eBook management.

I keep about a dozen books on my Kindle at a time. The others are in Calibre, where I do all my browsing, sorting, choosing, etc. I only stock my Kindle with a few "potential next reads".

I have a friend who has filled his PaperWhite3 memory with books. How does one even do that? That's a lot of books!

While I personally don't need the Kobo book management improvements, my friend could certainly benefit from them!

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by haertig

I have a friend who has filled his PaperWhite3 memory with books. How does one even do that? That's a lot of books!

While I personally don't need the Kobo book management improvements, my friend could certainly benefit from them!

My 8 GB Oasis is mostly full too. And that's about sixth of my whole library.

Still, I can manage perfectly well without managing books on my ereader.