I got an Xteink X4 a few weeks ago and love it. I've tried out a few different firmwares but haven't settled on one yet. I love the screen and how simple the interface is. It's kind of a pain in the butt getting my Kindle books on there, but worth the effort. It's also encouraging me to buy books outside of the Amazon ecosystem. I've been getting more stuff from Humble lately.
My favorite at this point is Witch reader (https://github.com/jpirnay/witchhunt-reader). All the features of Cross-point, with better book rendering, and more features. I've tried a lot of the various alternatives, and keep coming back.
If you want all your book series displayed together, AALU (https://github.com/dawsonfi/aalu) might be worth a look.
And Crosspoint OS itself is still really nice.
Is the only way to use it to break the DRM? I wish there was a path to being able to use all these devices with kindle ebooks legally
Some publishers such as Tor will occasionally publish DRM free ebooks.
I have very little respect for DRM, though. Personally, if the author has a patreon, I suggest donating the $20 to the Patreon and pirating the book
If you’re not redistributing ebooks you bought, it’s hard to imagine what legal claim someone could make against you, and even harder to establish the ethics of that claim.
To say nothing of Amazon’s ethics.
You need Android in that case, but that defeats the simplicity of these devices.
What are you suggesting exactly? That the maker of this hardware should do whatever it takes so that there is some official Kindle app like on Android?
I want to access my books on random devices too, which is why I never bought a frikkn Kindle book.
I did buy a bunch of Audible books, starting way back when there was nothing else, and I knew the deal when buying, so I simply went through the grief on my end to strip them (easy these days) and don't care about the legality (or rather, am willing to fight and defend the legality).
But buying something from Amazon and then complaining to anyone but Amazon that you want something Amazon doesn't provide or even allow, I don't get that.
This wish for this thing that you want should be directed at Amazon, and if you recognize that that would be pointless, well, correct, that's why you shouldn't buy a book from Amazon in the first place.
Or you should decide you don't recognize any legal conflict and help write software to uncrappify your property.
This issue isn't specific to the Kindle, you can go and buy books on Apple or Google or Kobo or Barnes and Noble and its the same story.
Many books can only be bought this way. Publishers don't want to sell books through platforms that don't have DRM, because they are scared of piracy.
It would be great if we could have open ebook reader software that could display these books.
eReaders like the Xteink X4 are beautiful but lots of books are impossible to legally read on it. Yes, I know that I can break the DRM, but I think its sad that this is the only path for legitimate purchases.
Is there a non-annoying way to get Libby books onto it? It's a step or two with a Kindle, but it would be cool to have them on a more portable device
I have not seen any support on the mini readers.
It’s just ACSM files. You can crack it using calibre to get epub which all these readers support
I also got one a few weeks ago! I love how pocketable it is.
I tried different firmwares too and ended up settling on CrossPoint. So far it's been the most stable and the UI feels more intuitive than the others (for me at least)
Did you try FreeInk? I was debating which (between CrossPoint and this) to flash my new X3 with.
Not parent commenter but I've been loving CrossInk after trying CrossPoint for a few days
from what i understand this is CrossPoint.
Oh yeah, indeed. Which is the rebrand haha
How do you get your kindle books on it?
you'd have to take the DRM out of the books, convert them to epubs and then transfer them.
its an involved process but that's always going to be that way on any e-reader that's not a kindle (or android based, where you can install the kindle app).
Same way you get your ios apps on it.