Likebook Alita

Originally Posted by Hyperduel

For those who own one, how you like it so far?

They just shipped them for EU customers I think (at least aliexpress). It will take some time until we get them. Will report then.

[azw409]

Mine is on it's way too from Spain. I guess it will arrive in 2-3 days. Nebo will be the first app I will try on it.

[Jamesvx]

Originally Posted by azw409

Mine is on it's way too from Spain. I guess it will arrive in 2-3 days. Nebo will be the first app I will try on it.

Did you order on ali Express? I am trying to find a screen protector at a sensible price.

Sent from my SM-G975F using Tapatalk

[azw409]

Yes I did. I think it may come with a matt screen protector so it might be worth holding off for a few days to confirm.

[azw409]

Mine arrived today and it did come with a matte screen protector for a nicer writing experience although getting it on without any bubbles might be an almost impossible task.

The build quality of the device itself is good, way better than an Onyx Boox M96C I had previously. The folio case is a bit cheap and has some tacky text on the cover which I would rather have not had but it's functional, slim and doesn't really add any weight to the device so that's all good.

I enabled Google Play framework easily enough - look for the settings icon on the Apps page in the 'User Settings' app. Then Google Play Store appears in the apps section. I tried Nebo but the latency was too high so it's pretty much unusable. I tried the built-in notetaker which was fast but the AI wasn't 100% and it's all a bit basic. I'm going to hunt around for something better with a cloud option so I can access my notes from laptop and other devices.

Other than that, my initial impressions are that the device is well made, the screen is bright and the device is responsive. It feels a little faster than my Mars so maybe the extra RAM makes a difference. Writing in the default notes app is a good experience with the screen protector but lack of features, limited AI and lack of Cloud storage really means I'm not going to use the default app. I'll use it for a few days and report back, but my impressions so far are favourable.

[azw409]

Well after a bit more testing, I have to say it's a bit of a disaster. Firstly I discovered that either it doesn't contain a battery or it's not working. It's stuck on 66% when charging and if I unplug it, it goes off immediately.

When plugged in, I've tried all the standard Android notetakers i.e. Nebo, Squid, Inkredible, One Note and they are all unusable because of the screen latency. The inbuilt notetaker isn't very good because I can't selectively convert writing to text, without converting the entire doc and that takes too long and loses all the formatting. There's no cloud backup / sharing with other machines. Also handwriting input into other apps using their port of the AOSP Google keyboard is also too slow at recognising words to be a pretty lame experience. So all in all it's no better than the Mars for me which I already have.

So poor quality control and lack of good note taking apps is making this a return for me, unfortunately.

I'm getting it with my mail today. I hope mine will be in better condition. I'm not primarily buying it for note taking so I'm still hopeful it will be ok. I think note taking on eink devices in general usually only work with the default apps provided with the reader which are especially tailored for the eink and specific device? If any of other apps worked then nobody would have been using the default apps believe me lol.

[gunnm]

Originally Posted by Merithyn

I'm getting it with my mail today. I hope mine will be in better condition. I'm not primarily buying it for note taking so I'm still hopeful it will be ok. I think note taking on eink devices in general usually only work with the default apps provided with the reader which are especially tailored for the eink and specific device? If any of other apps worked then nobody would have been using the default apps believe me lol.

I dont know how to program so I don't know the problems that take them to choose to make an app from "zero" instead of adapting the device to the most used note taking apps, but the first problem I see is that you have a device that works properly with one app and a app that only works on that device. And another problem is that not everybody needs the same, some people are missing a lot of features that already are in others apps or devices.

[azw409]

I've raised a suggestion / feature request with both Nebo and Squid for eInk support. I've dealt with Nebo support before and they were very good although I'm not optimistic that they'll treat this as any kind of priority.

[pazos]

Originally Posted by azw409

I've raised a suggestion / feature request with both Nebo and Squid for eInk support. I've dealt with Nebo support before and they were very good although I'm not optimistic that they'll treat this as any kind of priority.

Actually Onyx/Boyue use Myscript interactive ink technology to convert handwrittings to text (as most of the other apps in both Android and iOS). I dunno if they're licensing the software or just commiting IP thief.

One of the problems with Boyue is the lack of a SDK for 3rd party apps. Other problems: they steal software, they spoof device ids, they 'used' to bundle bloatware/malware/spyware, they build on top of a badly optimized platform (rk336x)


They (nebo), ofc, can workaround the lack of a Boyue SDK by reverse enginnering stock software and find how the stylus work. But I guess they have better things to do with their time.

Originally Posted by azw409

Well after a bit more testing, I have to say it's a bit of a disaster. Firstly I discovered that either it doesn't contain a battery or it's not working. It's stuck on 66% when charging and if I unplug it, it goes off immediately.

I charged mine with my usual usb charger but the battery overwhelmed the poor thing in no time (I haven't even noticed because my old readers where pretty low key on battery power). I then used a fast charger (matches the rating at it's lowest 2A/5V). Battery is otherwise fine on mine at least.

Default Notes App: lol, handwriting recognition is way too off (spitting out some gibberish all the time) and it takes quite some time not that I care much about this feature

Default reading app is fine I guess (tried only reading so far but I will try taking some notes later - mostly on pdf musical sheets and using Bluetooth pedal for turning pages - will see how that goes )

You will probably want some extra screen protectors because, yeah no way you will get it on without some kind of screw-up. No bubbles on mine but protector doesn't stick on one end (a millimeter too close to the edge ). Fine looking matte protector otherwise.

Case is ok, sleep function works.

Tried Moon+ Reader, Tachiyomi, Firefox - usable and working smooth.

I installed an 128GB SD card and it recognized it immediately.

So far only the system update screen is really annoying. I think updates via WiFi are broken. It's always doing that connecting, retrying, failing thing and it takes forever to change between those statuses. The update is supposedly only ~6MB so what in god's name is it doing all that time? I will probably just install the updates from local files if I find them online. That should work right?

[azw409]

Actually mine did that with updates too but it did eventually succeed. I thought it was a broken WiFi antenna bit out was fine with play store downloads. I suspect just poor bandwidth on the update server.

Lol, yeah WiFi. It's using ridiculous amount of battery power. The battery % is going down like every minute as someone said for some older models I think. I don't think if it lasted me more than 2 hours with WiFi on. When it's off the % usually stays the same even after hours of reading.

So, I tried one pdf songbook with sheets (about 150 pages ~26MB). Pages have no text just fullscreen images of music notes which are converted to pdf. Reader struggles to load pages. You get "caching page xy" when you are first time on any page.
Then it only caches a few seen pages so when you turn back it's instant but if you turn more than like 3 pages backward it forgets the cache and you see "caching page xy" screen again for "few" seconds. Is that suppose to work like that?

Turning pages with "Moukey Wireless Page Turner Pedal" works fine in default app and Moon+ Reader.

[azw409]

Have you tried KOReader ? I use that on my Mars for PDF's and it's pretty quick. The only thing I don't like about it is that it doesn't behave well as an Android app and you can't get to the home button without quiting but you would on the Alita since it has a hardware button.