Boox OS 4.0 Features Overview: Tab-Like Environment, Improved Notebooks, Bugs and Instabilities

[@Shoebutie]

I imagine this takes quite a bit of time. Kudos to you on putting together, worthwhile content like this.

[@0xKruzr]

they seriously need to just hire you as a user experience quality assurance consultant.

[@PasqualeCataldi]

@@0xKruzr I’d rather have Voja as an independent and unbiased voice

[@ambhat3953]

@@PasqualeCataldi Consultants do have independence voice, you know right ?

[@MyDeepGuide]

@ambhat3953 I know that and you know that, but with the paranoid state of consciousness that seems to be spreading further and wider these days and years, can you imagine the levels of nonsense I would need to deal with on a daily basis if I actually would offer consulting services to any company? 😳

[@ambhat3953]

@@MyDeepGuide I am not remotely advising you to take up consultant job. I just mentioned that, consultancy doesn't mean lack of freedom of speech.

[@0xKruzr]

@@MyDeepGuide I fully admit this is more than a little selfish on my part. but I also think you would do a pretty great job of making it clear that having done that work for Boox or whoever would not influence your reviews. you are always very obviously evenhanded in your content and I would not expect that to change.

[@Shoebutie]

Can’t wait to hear the comparison between 10.3 and super note a5x2!

[@daRock1212]

Hi Voja, great stuff. On not being able to nudge that widget to the side, it likely has an invisible border that's the size of the width of the screen (many launchers would then allow you to click and hold then resize the border, not sure if Boox 4.0 does the same). And the reason that Notes doesn't show as a recent app is because it's not a distinct app, but instead an activity of the OS (confusing, yes). Folks that have installed different launchers had to dig to find it, and found Notes among the activities. Eagerly waiting for this to push to Go 10.3, I have a few feedback items that Support said were included in updated firmware. Edit- Haha maybe I'm fine waiting for 4.1. Thanks again for all your diligent work :)

[@forpascal5890]

I hope Boox is watching this video and reads the comments in order to fix all this with a 4.1 version asap...

[@pogofun]

I feel like I actually prefer the simplicity of the current os on my go 10.3. the new feature to import pdfs in the notes app is great but I honestly don't know if it's worth an upgrade overall (if it even comes over to the 10.3)

[@5idi]

Yeah... I hope they bring the functionality but not the look to older devices...

[@ernestintownandjackintheco1024]

I've noticed that after an initial, fairly slow search, subsequent searches of anything go much more quickly. I ended up being pretty happy with it.

[@AamitMorthos]

As someone who uses their enote for ereader purposes only, I haven't updated to 4.0 yet because I like the library home screen. I like opening my ereader and seeing the wall of books and I don't think I can set that as an option in 4.0 as far as I've read. Really wish boox realized that people use big screen devices for ereading as well, there's been no updates to how their library works or organizes books. The enote take over has been bumming me out..

[@CyrilJap]

Home screen looks so similar to the Tab Ultra C.

[@garystuartwicks6322]

Absolutely it does, my Tab ultra 2 years ago and Tab ultra c last year had this UI

[@bluein2red423]

UI rendering might be "nicer", but it is also less readable to those with not-so-perfect eyesight (you can see this quite clearly in the video where the zoomed out image makes it much harder to read the UI on the 4c compared to the 3c). It would be nice to have it as an option therefore.

[@PasqualeCataldi]

I agree with you. How difficult would it be to have a couple of icon sets configurations to choose from?

[@5idi]

Agree. They also made many text elements smaller on OS 3.5.4 and although some lines are thicker, others are hardly visible. I complained, they said they fixed it in the next update, but OS 4 doesn't seem to fix it.

[@impulsesystems]

I have a Boox Go 10.3 that says it is up to date, on 3.5.4. Is OS 4.0 widely available?

[@lukazka]

I am between a new NA4C, and a used NA3C. Your videos helped me a lot, I don't have much of a budget but I will use it intensively, for work and university. Is the NA4C worth it, in terms of software advantages? And split-screen multi-tasking? Thanks!

[@em4me-Dan]

🙋‍♂Hi Voja! I am not that picky regarding the UI looks. I am more concerned that these glitches will eventually be fixed in upcoming releases in a timely manner. As always, a great video! Kudos from NYC🗽.

[@garystuartwicks6322]

I'm confused because I always had this UI on my Tab ultra in 2022 and on my Tab ultra C in 2023 before selling them and moving to the rMPP

[@HebrewGreekKnowledge]

I have had this on my Tab Mini C for a while also

[@heldersantiago6515]

Dont forget you can add links to documents directly on the homescreen. You dont have to go into the folders and find the document.

[@HolgerNestmann]

cool. thanks. can one link folders as well?

[@heldersantiago6515]

@@HolgerNestmann I dont think so. We'll, I haven't found a way to do it yet

[@notguilty5111]

One thing of note: if you happen to have more than one Boox device you might want to wait until the 4.0 update is available for all your devices. Syncing (using ONYX sync) in Neo Reader for annotations, reading position and such is not working between 3.x and 4.0. - which is really, really annoying. Patience, they say... not like you have a choice :)

[@fcf8269]

Boox Struggle with features because they never focus on them. They make a laundry list of stuff to say "we do this" and compete with others; in the same way they pull out a new device every few months; just for the sake of adding a checkbox on a list. Instead of focusing on their own features like the dictation and partner with app makers to get their devices supported in Android apps as first party apps, they just keep making things like this. And clearly that show they have no clue what are they doing, they just react to what others do, which show they have no clear idea nor northstar about where to go. They just ruined the only good product they had, which was the Note Air; and made it a color device only with the horrible OS they have on their Tab devices. Good job Boox; well done

[@JustinSCampbell]

I think you're using an older version of 4.0. THere's a big update to reader in the style area. You can now save custom style options that can be applied to multiple books.

[@MyDeepGuide]

It was the latest version available from about a week ago on the NA4C

[@johnmanley4528]

I transferred my 2024 MDO into the Notebook to test out. Strangely, a lot of entries I had checked off, the check marks did not transfer over. I also did not see an option to fit it to the width of the screen, which you can do in the Neoreader. I may try it again starting off the new year. I do think MDO works better in neoreader.

[@KevinGamin]

Voya, have you heard whether Boox will push OS 4.0 to the Note Air 3C? That’s my 10” tablet of choice and I’d love to get the standardized Boox OS experience like we have on the Tab Ultra C Pro, Tab Mini C, and others.

[@DanielMontesinosT]

Hi Voja, this is a well presented review, as always, but I don't understand how this is different from v3.5? I thought this was a review of the newly released v4, or if new features available on v4, but most or all you explain in this video is available already in v3.5? Am I missing something? Isn't this just an (excellent) review of the 3.5/4.0 note version of the Boox OS?

[@JustinSCampbell]

I agree with you about the bugginess. For now, I'm using my Go 10.3 as a daily driver. Also, syncing between neoreader on 3.5 and 4.0 is broken. So if you have a Boox e-reader syncing won't work. There's also issues syncing templates between notebooks that are on 3.5. Also the pens syncing doesn't work either.

[@Ultfris10]

To get 3rd party widgets to stay: Long press on app icon (Not the widget), select optimize, select others tab, toggle option 'Stay active in background' to on. Once you do this the widget for that app will work. You have to do it for each app whos widget you want to use. This also prevents apps from closing so if you open app switcher they will actually be there.

[@MyDeepGuide]

Thanks for the workaround tip! :) However, this should be done by the system, like it does on any other Android device, without the users needing to know or do these extra steps to call the functionality finished.

[@Ultfris10]

@MyDeepGuide I agree 100%.

[@lau-u6j]

Is the article mode corrected on 4.0? The issue on 3.5 (NA3C) is that once you get in the article mode, it crops to that area and doesn’t show the content in the excess area. Even worse, because it crops out the whitespace, I can’t take notes in the surrounding space in the article mode. I used to be able to do this before the update 3.5.

[@alehel88]

I saw a video from Boox where one of the shoots made it seem like Neoreader now supports left justified text. Can you confirm this?

[@neru_d]

Thank you for the video. A question- If you disable Boox launcher (lets say via adb or whatever), do you still lose E-ink options? I wonder if they finally separated these two or they still bake everything into launcher.

[@JonDisnard]

The brush scaling was probably working correctly. I believe the scaling is relative to the document size with respect to the zoom level. So am A4 sized page scaled to fit the small screen might look finer that a native full screen sized page. The Android home screen bugs appear to be an artefact of aggressive power saving, and (java) memory garbage collecting, at least that's my guess. It makes me wonder if the system has enough resources, like memory or CPU caches, to handle multiple process threads competitive for their share.

[@MyDeepGuide]

But if that is the design decision for the brush size implementation, what is the 1mm reference size for then? Relative to what? I and you know that it is probably relative to the native screen resolution at 300PPI, but that doesn't make sense, as PDF documents come in a variety of resolutions and page sizes, and that makes the 1mm real-world reference basically meaningless.

[@JonDisnard]

@MyDeepGuide my guess is the 1mm brush is calibrated to the native screen resolution. But users probably don't use canvases in the 10.7 (closer to A5 paper), and use scaled A4 sizes or PDF documents scaled at any arbitrary dimension. I've no idea if the default note app uses the native screen dimension, or if even that has scaling.

[@0xKruzr]

it definitely should not be running out of RAM, or hitting any memory pressure triggers in general that would cause the JVM to start garbage collecting, not at 6GB of capacity. this may be a matter of badly tuned OS settings.

[@JonDisnard]

@0xKruzr Agreed, and I appreciate you mentioning the jump to 6GiB memory. One might wonder why 4 GiB was not enough, and the obvious straightforward explanation is that more memory is simply better. After all memory capacity is trending higher in Android devices in recent years. But there could have been a more imperative reason, which could be an increase of overwhelming inefficiency. Why would that situation happen? Perhaps Boox software engineering is more goal oriented to release working software quickly, and not performance or efficiency oriented. Junior level college graduates might be less experience writing efficient software, using slow dynamic data structures, or pulling in huge dependency graphs from external libraries. We could speculate all day, but you get the idea that it's more likely Boox is using Minimum Viable Product (MVP) development paradigms to release software more quickly, which inevitably contains more mistakes. My personal hunch is, from software engineering perspective, that Boox has an over reliance on convenient yet inefficient software routines. Things like storing objects on the Heap instead of on the Stack, or put another way .... Things that dramatically amplify garbage collection overhead, and things that are simply slow yet quick/convenient to code. That said, your hunch is as good as mine... Who knows.

[@0xKruzr]

@@JonDisnard honestly I suspect you are right re: their efficiency in coding. Boox seems to follow a pattern of "write features, fix bugs later."

[@danielebristot3703]

Hi everyone, I recently bought a boox go 10.3 to replace my remarkable but I can't seem to get it right. 1) is it possible to organize the folders like on the remarkable with notes, PDFs and books within the same folder? 2) is it possible that by highlighting a text in "yellow" the gray of the highlighting almost completely covers the character of the text? 3) is there a good application to transfer files? Thanks so much to anyone who wants to help me.

[@faetre5h6wy]

1. Probably yes, but there are separate e-reading and note-taking apps. This means that the notes only appear in the note-taking app and the ebooks in the ebook app (as the device is android, you can download alternative apps instead of the default ones). 2. Do you mean whether you can black out text? You can definitely do this - there is a highlighter in the ebook app that will completely obscure lines of text, and different shades of grey. 3. This one is much better on Boox! You can link most cloud storage (Google Drive, OneDrive, Dropbox etc) directly to the device. I access my ebooks by putting them in the OneDrive folder on my PC, and they are accessible basically right away on both my Boox devices! You could organise your notes and ebooks however you like in your cloud storage, too. There is a learning curve with the Boox UI and some annoying stuff, but it has a lot of functionality, much much more than Remarkable.

[@PietroSiciliano-p4n]

Has version 4.0 addressed the Notes app performance issue?

[@2niteL8R]

Any idea when the TUC will see some love ❤️ firmware 4

[@Morteza-hp9li]

I have a question regarding links in the note app on Boox devices. Do links point to page numbers or to actual pages? For example, if I create a link to the [current] page 40 in another page, and later add a new page in the beginning so that the old page 40 is now 41, would the link now take me to the new page 41 [as it should], or would it wrongly take me to the new page 40? Also the same question about the outline feature. And what about Supernote devices? Because the correct implementation of link functionality is crucial for its actual usability.

[@paulbui-quang617]

When you use the link while you have added a page, it asks you to refresh the link. So it can have both behavior :) I of course usually update the link, because the first behavior is what we usually want

[@tahirahmed33]

Will the update appear on the boox tab ultra 2023 ( monochrome version )

[@GaryLangEngr]

Good review. I too will skip this update. I can't help wonder if they'd have better quality releases if their test matrix weren't so complex. The product portfolio is confusing which has to create buyer confusion and slow sales as well. Their product management needs to learn about product portfolio management. I went to their web site to buy the new Max to replace my old one... They have more products than Apple!

[@MyDeepGuide]

Yes, and the overall catalog state is a mess to be honest, especially the Go series, which is all over the place. Some Go devices are brand new design lines, others are simply iterative updates of previous lines of devices. Unfortunately, even their hardware lines of devices lack cohesion, in a very similar way their UX and UI does.

[@redos111]

I Heard all models will get os4.0 including note air2, can you confirm?

[@MyDeepGuide]

No I can't because I don't have any insider info. But it does make sense.

[@redos111]

​@@MyDeepGuideanother question - with os 4.0 you can put pdf with working hyperlinks as canvas / background? Great!

[@RPGenieUS]

My notes app crashed 3 times when I tried to undo in a note. I hoped you also had this issue so I’d know it wasn’t just mine.

[@MyDeepGuide]

I had one occurrence like that, except that it froze the whole tablet, so I had to wait for it to get its bearings again, do a restart and then it worked normally again. This happened after the making of the video

[@JoeBrigAI]

Does Boox 4.0 have a proper notes highlighter?

[@cosmonz]

One of the very few things I miss about my Scribe 😉

[@PasqualeCataldi]

Thanks for the super helpful video, Voja. I have a NA3C too and I was hoping to have a firmware upgrade soon, but now I’m more willing to wait. The document outline bit is promising but currently underwhelming. I also don’t understand why they don’t sweat more what they already have, such as the Boox calendar app. They could do so much more with it, including allowing to add links to specific document/note pages - not to mention, live integration with online calendars (Google, Outlook, iCalendar) and be able to use it from the browser. Finally, I completely agree on the searching/indexing of handwritten text. Indexing, showing results as they are found, etc are low hanging fruit which should be implemented immediately. There is so much potential, not well used. They could even jump on the AI bandwagon a bit more if they were to consider adding tiny open-source LLMs on the device to make search a more integrated journey. I know that this would consume a lot of memory, but as long as the feature is limited and not overhyped, there could be huge scope there.

[@nord2992]

Seems like a typical Boox Beta Update😮‍💨

[@carlosespinal17]

Again, lack of vision and direction. Iterate fast, include features others are doing, try to stay on top of all competitors by doing everything at once. If Boox asked themselves what type of business they wanted to be, and the answer was: sell as much e-waste as possible, then I understand why the business operates the way it does.

[@CyrilJap]

I couldn’t agree more about the lack of direction and all, but people who need something more open don’t really have a choice. Remarkable and Supernote are great if you’re not tech savvy, Boox offers more capabilities if you have something special in mind. I couldn’t do what I’m doing with any other eink device.

[@0xKruzr]

@@CyrilJap ^-- this. typically what happens with Boox is cycles of feature innovation followed by bugfixes. just need that second cycle to kick in!