I switched from a Kindle to a Kobo (monochrome), and simply having the book cover as the lock screen makes me like it so much more. I always paid to not have ads on the Kindle, but it would show a bunch of generic images. The book cover is the obvious choice. Kobo gets it.
The reading experience is a little more bare bones, but good enough, and still offers things a physical book does not.
For anyone with an ad-free Kindle, and running the most recent firmware, and you're looking for the Display Cover option using Amazon's documentation, and you're not finding it...like me.
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.
The whole point of e-ink screens is that the device only needs to be "on" when redrawing the screen.
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.
"on" in this case mainly means whether it's unlocked and reacting to input. It can make sense to have no distinct lock-screen, but I can also see it leading to frustrated users who are annoyed by not knowing if the device reacts to input or not.
It doesn't really matter if it's on or off. This is how I have my Kobo configured via KOReader. It does put some small text "Sleeping" at the bottom in a place that doesn't obscure the page, but even this is configurable. I like it because it's like a book laying open, inviting me to jump back in.
With these displays, there's not really an "off" because as long as there's no change on the display there's no energy usage. Of course, that dies not account for the OS.
The problem is, once you want to flip page you’ll try to press the touch screen and nothing will happen since you haven’t turned on the device with the power button (you don’t want the touch screen active always since it will drain the battery).
I guess they could add some indication on the screen it’s in ”sleep” mode though, like a frame or icon somewhere…
Honestly, I think they should optimize the time it takes a powered off device to boot up and turn the page after the user presses a button[0]. Sure, those readers tend to be full-blown Linux computers with nontrivial boot time, but approximately none of the features this stack provides are needed for simply turning the page.
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.
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[0] - Gosh, I keep forgetting the readers only have touchscreens now. Another reason for superiority of hardware buttons for page turning.
> 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.
I stopped using one ereader we had because the damn touchscreen kept flipping the page if e.g. a blanked brushed it while I was reading in bed.
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.
The obvious things is a tiny RTOS with enough of an ereader buffer to keep 5 screens (random number - maybe even the full boot). press the button the RTOS boots and flips the page almost instantly, then it boot linux in a VM to add more screens to the buffer, and/or take over the screen. Linux would have to be aware it is running in an RTOS like that so it can take over where you left off in the boot.
There are a bunch of comments about how this is the default experience now. It's only the default experience if you buy the ads-free version.
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.
> 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.
They closed that loophole. Kindles for Kids now show ads when not in Kids mode.
Wait, you have to pay to not have ads on a Kindle?
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.
I asked Amazon via chat to remove the adds because I was SCANDALIZED, just utterly SCANDALIZED to see romance novels on ads on the lock screen. They removed the ads for free. ;)
I bought the slightly cheaper version with ads years ago and asked support to remove them because they „weren‘t relevant to me given where I am living“. I found out about this option on reddit or in the product reviews on some local retailer‘s site, so I assume it is/was a bit of an open secret.
I got my Kindle before any ads were in play (its like a second generation?), and several years afterwards it started displaying ads. Thankfully a chat with amazon solved it because I wasnt in US, so the ads were not applicable to me, but I definetly did not have option to buy non-ad version when I bought it.
I'm in the UK and you absolutely get ads on kindles unless you have a very old device or bought the ad free model(TBF all kindles sold outside of Amazon at Currys, JL etc are always ad free).
Last I checked, about three years ago, any place selling kindles online (UK/Ireland) had small-print next to them stating that an internet connection and additional fee was required to remove ads.
I've been using the same Kindle Paperwhite for about 13 years and there always have been ads in it because I didn't pay for the 30$ extra initially. It never bothered me as they stop when you put the device in airplane mode, which is what I always do ;-)
It's a one-time thing, it's like $20. They've been doing it for at least six or seven years. You probably selected it when you ordered your current model.
When I bought my Paperwhite around 2013, I noticed that ads were an option on the kindles sold in the US but not in Canada. In Canada there was only the no-ads version.
Its been that way for years, the ad is on the lockscreen, and its an ad for other books. The version with no advertisement is 20$ more, I don't see the problem if someone wants to get a discount for looking at ads.
As far as problems go, I understand it's been a constant and this specific implementation is pretty low on the list, but generally, greed leading to ads intruding every aspect of our lives and people thinking up with new spots to place ads is a problem.
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.
I'd love to see most advertising simply banned, but in the case of books there's precedent from back when people used to actually read enough to be worth advertising to: mid-century pulp novels often had a couple pages of glossy ads right in the middle, usually including one or more cigarette ads.
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).
Isn’t it strictly worse if they only offer the $130 no ads version? Why is choice a bad idea in this context? All it means is more people can afford it.
Always been a thing, I think. When you bought it you could pay like $20 extra to not have them - you probably paid and never thought about it since, I imagine.
Actually there is a hack. After buying a kindle, you just write to kindle support and say that you are getting ads and you are not aware why are you getting them. They usually would remove them for you. Worked for me though when I bought kindle.
That's not a hack. Customer support just doesn't want to argue with people who are likely to get belligerent. You can get a lot of stuff for free just by throwing a tantrum, but is that really who you want to be?
I disagree. It's exploiting a weakness in customer service provision in order to work around built-in UX degradation. Not many people would think of it.
Our society can only exist because people don't push the boundaries of what is technical legal but still harmful to others. There are also many laws you can break without any risk of getting caught. It has to be that way because we can only invest a limited amount of our resources into enforcement of our laws. It's one big prisoner's dilemma where individuals gain by defecting but if too many people defect on the social contract the whole system falls apart.
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.
> push the boundaries of what is technical legal but still harmful to others
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.
YMMV, I paid for a no ad version of the Kindle and when I moved countries and changed the kindle store I stated receiving ads. After a 5 minute online chat they removed the ads again, but not before confirming my original purchase of the ad free kindle PW 10 in 2018.
Also works to say that you live in a country where Kindles aren't officially sold so you can't make use of the ads anyway even if you wanted to. Don't know if they actually check if you are in one of those countries, but I am so it worked for me.
This was, arguably, a huge driver for Kindle sales in such countries (mine included), as that $20 or whatever saved made much more of a difference for people there.
I've been a kindle user for so long I'm embarrassed to admit I don't have any concept of what it is like to get ebooks outside of the Amazon ecosystem. Was the change easy to make? Do you feel like you have access to as much content as you did with a kindle?
I use a Boox reader, but pretty close to the same experience. For me, I either buy the book from one of the many places that lets you download epub, or buy it on the Kindle store and download it from Libgen. It's really a non-issue. I've only run into one or two books I wasn't able to get an epub of, and those I ended up reading on the Kindle cloud reader on my laptop.
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.
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.
I bought a Kindle Paperwhite in 2020, it's been doing that since day 1 of my purchase without jailbreaking or anything.
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 definitely not "a decade". I have the 2013 Kindle Paper white and it doesn't have that feature without JB, the oldest device supported is Kindle Paperwhite 7th Gen which is released in 2019.
It's likely you are just lucky to buy a KPW with that feature just rolled out.
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"
I think it's more likely you just didn't notice for 6-7 months. It's not just "tabloid" articles that noticed it in April 2021. This wasn't noticed by users on places like mobileread.com until April 2021 either and that place is comprised of some of the biggest eInk fans out there.
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.
There's a secret slideshow folder(demo mode?) where you can put in your own images that will display when it sleeps. It was kind of fun to use it as an eink display. I never figured out how to remote in/ssh to remotely swap the images though.
From some of the other comments, it looks like a rather recent addition by Amazon (around 2021). I got rid of my last Kindle after 2021, but maybe I never got that update.
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.
Both Kindle PW 10 and 11 gen support showing the cover. Personally I actually don’t like to see the cover of the books. Nobody’s business to see what I’m reading.
I'm keeping cover because it helps me remember the title of the book! Otherwise I typically buy book after seeing recommendation on goodreads or elsewhere, start reading and when someone asks me the name of the book or the author - I have no idea! Cover helps with that.
The reading experience is a little more bare bones, but good enough, and still offers things a physical book does not.