Hello Everybody You may remember a few weeks ago, I told the group that I'd acquired a BrailleNote Touch from HumanWare. At that point, there were some glaring firmware problems which I noticed immediately and I opened a dialogue with the developers of all Humanwine products.
Last Saturday, The company published their first firmware update since the device went public and, my oh my, was it worth waiting for! The audio and vidio codecs used throughout the entire device have been drastically upgraded. The audio is now superb, in terms of both quality and quantity. The camera has now been activated, and my tests show that it works very wel for both motion video and also still photos. I'm not sure precisely what the resolution is, but I will find out shortly when my contact at HumajWare returns to work at the end of the week. Rachel, the Acapela Group voice which I use on all of my devices except for the iOS devices where it isn't supported, works exceptionally well. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that the quality of the synthetic speech on this device is now the very best of all tablets I've ever heard or used. The overall maximum volume is around 20% louder than it used to be, and the clarity, even at maximum volume, has to be heard to be believed. I'll prepare a demo in audio if the intgest is still there. I was going to do that when I first acquired the device, but didn't do so because of the poor audio. Now, all I can say is, "she rocks"! Music sounds excellent even through the device's own internal speakers. And the video output via the HDMI interface is, so I'm told, excellent. Battery life has also been improved. With the video screen switched off, I can get the better part of 20 hours use per charge cycle, easily! The device has two modes of operation. One, (the default) is called "Touch Braille". That mode uses the Perkins-style keyboard and the renowned HumanWare four thumb keys. Between the two banks of thumb keys there are three more buttons. From left to right, these are: Previous Menu, (a triangular key), main menu, (Home), the treditional Android circular key, and finally, Context menu, similar to the right click under Windows. these controls all now perform very snappily, and I for one am very happy with the overall improved device. The only thing lacking now is the ability to control another tablet via BlueTooth. But I'm told that functionality is currently being developed, and will be added either in the final quarter of this year, or the first quarter of 2017. I personally didn't buy the device for that purpose. In fact I bought it knowing that that functionality didn't currently exist. I have other solutions for that and in any case, when I receive my ElBraille, that will complete my collection. Back to this device. The WiFi network connectivity is much faster now, as is file retrieval from external USB or SD media. On that front, my only big criticism is that they still have not updated the SD card reader to an SD/XC device, so large capacity media is not an option. But again, for what I need, 32GB is enough space to store my frequently accessed documents and other files. So it isn't the end of the world. In short, then, I'm extremely pleased with the device overall, and it is extremely stable, as I'd expect from am Android device. I've written countless Emails and received even more, especially when multitasking. Notifications can be configured to go silently or do play a ring tone, or even stay totally silent. Oh yes, and Google Docs, Drive and any accessible Android app from the Play Store can be added. Microsoft Word for Android also works well, as do most other Microsoft offerings as far as my tests show. Web browsing is much improved, as HumanWine's default browser is now the latest version of Mozilla FireFox for Android. It's much more responsive than Chrome used to be, although Chrome itself has also been updated, and is there as an option. The database apps, planners and other similar software is very powerful and extremely customisable to suit the user's needs. I'm including a major review of this device in the book I'm writing currently, which is going to be called "The Battle Of The Braille Note Takers". I intend to publish on Amazon when the work is completed. Meanwhile, if anybody wants further information regarding this device, I'd be only too happy to help. Also if there's still an interest in an audio presentation of some kind. I'll consider that, too. —'-'-'-'— My compliments And Kindest Regards Gordon Smith Accessibility And Information Technology Support Specialist ―――――――—
