T68 Lynx First Impressions

[JimMcLaren]

I've had my T68 Lynx for about a week now and I'd thought I'd give my first impressions. My first reader was a Pocketbook 302 which has outstanding firmware. When it died I went looking for something new. I tried the Aura HD but was disappointed. So far I'm pretty happy with this. There are three exceptions.

• As many have noted, the light is pretty bright, even at it's lowest setting. Especially in a dark room.
• The touch screen is not very accurate.
• Every time I start it indexes books on the device. This usually takes 2-3 minutes. It's very annoying. It was annoying enough that I decided to use the firmware that Booxtor posted. The firmware is very similar. So far the only differences I've found are that the keyboard is different and the Booxtor firmware has access to all of the Android settings. (This is only through the settings app in the app drawer). I guess the advertised differences count too but I wasn't too concerned about them.

I generally end up heavily modifying my readers to make them the way I like them. That's not the case with this firmware. Both the Booxtor firmware and the Lynx firmware were the same regarding the following observations, with the exception of gmail.

• I like the Onyx Reader best of the four installed and have set it as my default for epub and pdf. I installed Moon+ Pro and it wasn't any better than the Onyx reader. The Onyx reader seemed crisper and since you can control the frontlight in the app while in Moon+ I couldn't (at least I couldn't see how to do so) it has an advantage.
• I didn't feel the need to install another launcher. I would gain nothing from it since I intend to us this as primarily a reader.
• I did install button savior which has proved helpful. I have the pro version which allows me to change the number and order of buttons and installed the HD theme. I use the PopControl which only works with the default theme or the theme pack. The default theme doesn't work so well on eink. PopControl allows me to launch up to nine apps from a popup menu.
• I did root it but that wasn't strictly necessary. I wanted to install quickboot which requires root. And Button Savior says that some of it's capabilities will be limited without root but I didn't find anything I needed to do that I couldn't without root.
• I installed some third party software which has enhanced my use of the program.
  • Olive Tree Bible Study - Transitions between pages are disconcerting. Otherwise it works very well.
  • Evernote - I really can't give you a good evaluation. The screen seems to be a little dim but I haven't tried note taking or looking for things in my notebooks.
  • Rotation Control - Works pretty well. The Onyx Launcher will rotate but you gain nothing from that. In fact the Recent Reading: list is hidden. I do use this app to rotate the screen after I've launched the browser. That works well.
  • Button Savior - see above.
  • Quick Boot - Works fine so far.
  • Gmail - Can't get Google Play services to install so Gmail won't run. I might try something like installing another browser whose homepage is gmail. I don't really need the Gmail app per se. Gmail worked fined on the original firmware.
  • ES File Explorer - Works fine.

I wanted this reader so I could have most of my information available without carrying a tablet too. It's available on my phone if necessary but that's just not the same. Also, LED screens (like on phone, tablet, computer) tend to keep me from sleeping if I use them within 1-2 hours of going to bed. I'm hoping this helps in that arena.

[JHarry]

Does QuickBoot can boot the system in 1 second as reported in news?
Could you please provide the apk file of QuickBoot so we could have a try?
Thanks

[JimMcLaren]

I.think that is the hotboot feature which is only in the pro version which I don't have. Forum rules don't allow posting links to copyrighted software. If you need it and can't get it from any market we can figure something out.

[kuskro]

Originally Posted by JimMcLaren

[*]Gmail - Can't get Google Play services to install so Gmail won't run. I might try something like installing another browser whose homepage is gmail. I don't really need the Gmail app per se. Gmail worked fined on the original firmware.

Gmail version 4.5.2 works pretty well.

Besides, maybe this post could enhance your T68 performance.

[JimMcLaren]

Originally Posted by kuskro

Gmail version 4.5.2 works pretty well.

Besides, maybe this post could enhance your T68 performance.

Well, I had thought I had installed the latest Booxtor firmware but it hadn't taken. When I actually got it installed Gmail worked.

Thanks for the tip on Lightning Browser. It looks good, especially for a tablet this size. I do need to install a CPU manager but I like the Boox launcher so won't be replacing it. I think the readers are all pretty good so don't think I'll be removing them either.

[pugs466]

I just got mine today. T68 is awesome. I don't have any problems with the touchscreen. I like the Pandora app. Everything works. Screen contrast is fantastic. I bought it for PDFs and its been great.

[DoctorWkt]

Here's my "first impressions" of the T68 Lynx after having it for about 3 weeks. So far I've rooted it, installed a new launcher, fiddled with the sleep images, bricked the device a few times and managed to recover!

I'm still on Lynx firmware 675c088, dated 10th Jan 2015, mainly as there are no changelogs for the newer Booxtor firmware versions.

I'm using the device as a tablet more than an e-reader, with ADW Launcher. So far the device is rock solid, with no reboots. The screen calibration also seems fine. Here are the apps I've installed:

E-readers: AlReader, ezPDF and Foxit PDF. I'm using the standard AlReader for e-books and Foxit PDF for PDFs. I tried ezPDF but the line of icons at the top of the screen was intimidating!

Web browsers: Opera Mini and Dolphin. I haven't settled on a clear winner here. I use Dolphin on my phone, but Opera Mini seems to be a bit more responsive on the T68. Edit: I'm now trying Lightning Browser, which seems even faster than Dolphin and Opera Mini.

Utilities: Battery Monitor Widget, BusyBox Free, DiskUsage, Market Helper, No-frills CPU Control, OS Monitor, Root Explorer, Rotation Control Lite, SuperSU, Titanium backup, VNC server, VX ConnectBot. The colours in Titanium backup make it near impossible to use. No-frills CPU Control is easy to set up. I've been using most of the others for years on my phone.

RSS: Feed+. Nice and simple and has a clean interface.

Games: Five Hundred and Klondike Solitaire.

E-mail: K-9 Mail.

Maps: Goodle Maps, and OruxMaps for offline use.

Keyboard: SlideIT Keyboard with SlideIT Classic Skin. You can disable the button animations, thin down the slide trail and make it shorter, and this makes the keyboard more usable.

On the tweaking side, I've rooted the T68 with Cydia Impactor. I've changed the sleep screen image by replacing the images in framework-res.apk. I've modified the boot.img file to fix the init.freescale.rc file to remove the line that says setprop ro.ONYX_DISABLE_KEYGUARD 1, so that I have to enter a PIN number when I wake up the device. And I've modified the keylayout/gpio-keys.kl file to say key 28 HOME WAKE so that the front screen is now the Home key.

Now the device does what I want, it's very usable and stable.

Cheers, Warren