--> background is "silver" instead of white
One has 5 choices for the background colour with the Kyobo eReader app. I managed to get an english epub book onto an SD card and played with the eReader app a bit. Other options it has include a switch to preload all the pages of a book, five font size settings and the sounding of a click on page turning. There are two other checkbox items which I have yet to figure out. Pages are turned with a simple tap on the right or left side of the screen. Swiping also works but tapping is best. Chapters are indexed and quickly accessible from a menu as is an extensive search feature and a bookmarking capability. Text-to-speech (TTS) is available for english text. However, it's mostly inaudible, misspronounces many words and is rather useless. PDF books can be infinitely sized, comes with page preview and operates much like adobe reader on a Mac or Windows box.
The Mirasol screen is very good. I can use it during the day inside without front lighting. I have been using it like this as an eReader on and off all day today and the battery is still over 90%. I'm pretty sure it is wifi that eats the battery. Although front lighting at night is best, I can use the device at night while sitting under halogen lighting without front lighting. I loaded some pictures from my computer and they look great without the front lighting and just OK with front lighting turned on. Front lighting tends to accent the low resolution of the display. The responsiveness of the touch controller is more than adequate..
Software is the weak point for the product. I've yet to use Android a whole bunch but I find all the standard functions - clock, calculator, memos, music player, contacts and calender deficient in their simplicity. Personal functions like contacts and calendar are designed to sync with Exchange. On these fronts, I'm spoiled with that which Apple provides.
On the music player front, I loaded some mp3 and MPEG-4 audio files. They were recognized by the player and it even loaded their album covers and indexes. However, when I tried to listen to them I got a message saying the audio file format was not supported. With the mp3 files, I was most surprised to get this error as playing those types of files was noted within the Kyobo promotional literature.
A wierd thing about the Android implementation is that it has a camera, dialer, FM Radio, Voice Dialer, SIM Toolkit, Terminal Emulator, VPN Services, Home Screen Tips and couple over "qualcomm" related applications which are unaccessible. It sure looks like this product went out the the door with a "pushed out" implementation of Android. |
