The reading experience is a little more bare bones, but good enough, and still offers things a physical book does not.
I guess they could add some indication on the screen it’s in ”sleep” mode though, like a frame or icon somewhere…
I'm sure I'm underestimating the complexities of the problem, but the first idea that pops into my head is to add some flash storage that's, say, 5x the size of the framebuffer, and always keep in it the current page + next two and previous two pages (swapping pointers to avoid unnecessary writes), and have an extra microcontroller that would wake on button press, read the appropriate page from the flash buffer, and send it to the display controller. The whole process could take a fraction of the second (+ screen redraw time), all while the main OS wakes up (or boots up) in the background, and the user would experience no delays if all they're trying to do is read their book page by page. Once ready, the OS would update the flash buffer and stay active for a short while, in case the user decides they want to flip pages quickly.
--
[0] - Gosh, I keep forgetting the readers only have touchscreens now. Another reason for superiority of hardware buttons for page turning.
Kobo still has a reader with buttons thankfully. I don’t understand how people tolerate touchscreen on e-readers. It’s extremely distracting compared to just pressing.
Buttons were absolutely perfect for this use case, on a dedicated e-reader—less so, say, an iPad mini that also does other stuff, but also those nicer touchscreens don't accidentally trigger as often so it's not as big a problem. Touch screen is nice for navigating menus but should be disabled when reading.
In fact, with respect to the e-ink readers, a "screen saver" that turns on automatically is a bad idea that removes useful functionality - being able to keep the same page up for hours without interacting with the device is a feature, as it allows you to use it as a reference, like you'd do with a paper printout.
- I typically stop reading at the end of chapters
- The so-called screen saver creates dark and light points wherever there are dark and light points on the book's cover
- The screen needs to be refreshed to return these points to homogeneity
Outcome: most of the times the screen is refreshed, I get no use of it. Most of the time I spend reading, the screen needs to be refreshed.
It looks like earlier this year they moved the option out of Settings > Device Options and it's now located in Settings > Screen & Brightness. Which ironically doesn't seem to be documented anywhere that I can find.
Since I don't want to pay extra to disable the ads, the trick I figured out is to buy the Kindle for Kids. It comes with a cover, no ads, and a 2 year warranty. You can turn off the kids stuff with one switch, and then it's just a normal Kindle.
If you buy it on Black Friday or one of their other sale days, you should be able to get it for the same price or less than the regular edition would be when not on sale.
They closed that loophole. Kindles for Kids now show ads when not in Kids mode.
When did that start being a thing? I've been using a kindle for about 14 years, my current one is a few years old. I've been thinking about upgrading, but it works perfectly fine, and I've never had it display ads, and haven't had to pay anything for that "privilege".
It sounds like this will be my last Kindle device if I now have to pay extra for no ads, on a device I've already paid for, to read books I also pay for.
When will the madness stop!?
As much as I hate advertising, this is as good as it gets
Creating a different experience around reading books for those who have and those who have not is also a problem, given how important literacy and the printing press are to the development of our society.
The first or last pages of books are still frequently used to sell other books from the same author or from the same publisher. Not that long ago they'd come with cut-out cards to mail in for your order for more of the publisher's books from the partial catalog printed in your book (nobody orders by mail any more, is the only reason the stopped that, I assume). Some of my books when I was a kid would have the first chapter of another book from the same anthology series at the end, to sell it (Goosebumps did this, for example).
You can get a Kindle for $110 with ads, or for $130 without ads.
http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/meaning-of-hack.html
It's not far off a hack. And not OP but personally I've got very few problems with getting one over on massive corporations like Amazon.
Likewise, businesses lose money on people who habitually return things. People who behave reasonably subsidize the "ingenious" minority. Generous warranty and return policies can only exist when most people behave reasonably.
This is actually a good description the behaviour of megacorps like Amazon. They are constantly looking for new ways to increase and consolidate market share, pushing or breaking the boundaries of anti-trust regulations, at the expense of the consumer.
I wouldn't advocate this sort of behaviour towards individuals or small businesses, only megacorps. Highly dubious that this would actually cause harm to the average person. If anything it would hasten the enshittification process, open the field up to competition, and be a net positive for society.
I am likely coming at this from an entirely different mindset to you. In my mind, the current economic structure implies that sufficiently large corporations are pitched in a battle against ordinary people.
I have both an old Kindle Paperwhite 2nd Gen I think and a Kobo Clara.
The kindle 'lives' in the car and the Kobo at home so I always have something to read.
I use Calibre to sync to both.
Rather than directly accessing Amazon from the Kindle I download bought books to my PC then strip the DRM - so I can read the same book on both the Clara and Kindle.
See: https://github.com/noDRM/DeDRM_tools
I'd say that the initial awkwardness is from deliberately not connecting the Kobo or Kindle to the internet to stop them from 'phoning home' when you set them up. The Kindle is easy - just don't connect it, the Kobo seems to insist but there's a simple step-by-step to bypass the enforced sign up on the Clara I use.
See: https://yingtongli.me/blog/2018/07/30/kobo-rego.html - basically SQL commands.
and you can get firmware updates for the Kobo devices via
https://pgaskin.net/KoboStuff/kobofirmware.html
and they are easy to apply - drag / drop.
I don't get books from Kobo's site as it used to be hard if not impossible to strip the DRM from them - which meant I couldn't read them on my Kindle.
Hope that helps.
2021.
People have certainly been asking for it for at least the last decade. Jail breaking doesn't count.
It's not a new thing that journalists cover old features as if they've just been added, because they just found out about it and feel they're newsworthy
It's likely you are just lucky to buy a KPW with that feature just rolled out.
I only added my experience because bongobingo said 2021 and cited a tabloid "article" as proof.
The feature definitely predates April 2021, how long? I have no idea, possibly only 6-7 months, as I bought mine in October 2020.
More "tabloids" in April 2021 https://www.tomsguide.com/news/amazon-kindle-update-adds-kil...
More nerds in August 2021, https://forums.whirlpool.net.au/archive/30x1qmxj "the setting that was added a few months ago in Settings/Device Options to show the "Display Cover" of the book you are currently reading"
Amazon discussing rolling it out during ... April 2021, https://www.amazonforum.com/s/question/0D54P00008A1VpoSAF/di...
Maybe you were in a pre-release A/B or region, or simply didn't notice the update.
By all accounts your Oct. 2020 date is the earliest reported date for it being an official feature. Kobo has had it since day one in 2010, Kindle not so much.
If it takes some competition for Amazon to finally add some very basic features like this after a decade, I will keep supporting that competition.
I’ve grown frustrated with Amazon in a lot of areas, this was just one small one. I’m looking to divest my dependence on Amazon, and the Kobo isn’t leaving me missing anything.