My Clara BW is my daily driver. As much as I'd like to use an open reader, their rendering and screen quality are still not quite as polished as the corpo options.
It would be better if it was an option on the setup screen, and even better if it was the default option and if the login screen was in the parameters.
Because as an hidden option I always fear that they remove it and that we have to find an alternative. And so far DIY e-reader do not seem great.
The way they implemented this means that these Kobos can always avoid being e-waste even if Kobo disappears. Assuming they don't maliciously remove it, that is, but seeing as it was added fairly recently and is fairly obscure, I doubt they would bother doing so for current and past devices.
> And so far DIY e-reader do not seem great.
Being generous and expanding DIY to mean any "open" or "modifiable" reader, this ecosystem has actually be rapidly improving in quality and selection recently. A few new devices were announced recently, and I'm particularly interested in the new M5Stack offering since it has a frontlight and LoRA.
https://liliputing.com/lilbits-more-phone-sized-e-ink-gadget...
I wish I could recommend any Android-based readers, but the software ecosystem for them is quite poor. I would immediately purchase one if they offered a verifiably-clean AOSP or LineageOS option.
It requires an online setup (account).
A quick search did not find what your saying. Can you please post a how-to or link one (that I couldn't find)?
This guide is for a kobo that is already set up, but the procedure is mostly the same from step 5 onwards for a new device.
The only step that I think is missing from this guide is that you have to select a language before connecting the Kobo via USB, in my experience. Mass storage mode should work once you have picked a language.
I also did the same on a factory reset, used Libra Color, and that worked well. On that device I had to do some trickery to get the notes feature to work, which I think involved loading up some dictionary files. I can't readily find the guide I followed for that.
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Edit: I'll also note here that this setup works flawlessly with Calibre! It is detected and syncs easily!