Unboxing and first try of Icarus Illumina - did not go as planned

Last time I was writing on the subject, I was anxiously waiting for the device to arrive. When it finally got to my doorstep (or actually my desk at the office), I was jumping up and down out of pure joy (colleagues wondering what just hit me).

Like a child on a Christmas day, I opened the package and found a nice black-and-blue coloured box where the sticker "8Gb" got my eye right away. "Four gigabytes extra, jey!". More unboxing and the first impression was definitely on how small it was! Of course I had seen similar devices and looked at the dimensions from the specs, but still. So small. And cute. Awwww. Below you can see the device beside a normal pen. The hight and thickness of Illumina does not differ significantly of a pen. Width of course a little (probably a good idea) ;).

I really liked the touch and feel of the sides and back of the Illumina, since they feel a little rubbery. I am usually a bit clumsy with things so a little bit of stickyness is definitely a plus.

Icarus Illumina turns on from a button at the bottom of the device which my husband rushed to press first. Bummer! Oh well. Does not really matter, since here started all the trouble. With the first press, the power button got stuck down, which made it practically impossible to put the device to sleep or turn on and off, since everytime you tried to use the button it either 1) did not respond or 2) restarted the device. Somehow the stucked power button also affected the UI since after waking up it couple of times just froze.

I sent an email on Friday to the company stating the problem and asking for advice. They replied on Tuesday and asked to leave a RMA (return merchandise authorization) on their web portal. I did that and received a reply the following day asking me to send the device back to them so that they can fix it or send me a new one. They said that I could find the return information (address etc.) from their portal, to where, I could not however login anymore. I sent an email, waited for response, got the address. Asked, "Who is going to pay the shipping cost?" No reply. Asked again. No reply... Send another email stating that the shipping cost is 20€ and I think it is not my job to pay it if they send me a broken device in the first place. They replied, that it is not their job to pay it either and that they will pay the shipping cost when they send a fixed/new device back to me. Am I the difficult customer here?! I've already paid for the (broken) device and its shipping cost and now they think it is ok to ask me to pay the shipping of the broken device again?! Grrrr.

But what can I do really? Have a broken, unusable, device that I paid 144€ for (incl. a case and shipping cost) or pay the 20€ more in order to get a working one (hopefully, fingers crossed)? So, today I sent the device back to them and have to wait probably couple of weeks to receive a new one. Bummer. I so wanted to have it with me on a holiday at the end of the month.

Buying an Icarus Illumina E653 (Android 4.2) ereader

This post will be different from my previous home decoration & renovation -related posts (in Finnish) since I struggled finding a good Android ereader, and I want to save your time, if you want one too.

Short glimpse into available eink devices in the market (spring 2015)

From my perspective, most of the currently available ereaders are troublesome because of their restricted operating systems and limited file format support.

If you buy most of your ebooks from Amazon and are ok with seeing the extra trouble of converting .epubs into .mobi/.azw or sending your .pdfs to the device, you will most likely want a Kindle, Kindle Paperwhite 2 or Kindle Voyage. In a similar way, most of the other ereaders (such as Nook GlowLight, Kobo Aura, Bookeen Cybook Muse and PocketBook Sense), have their own bookstores and own supported file formats which of course does not include Kindle's .azw (/.mobi) format. Well, fortunately there are softwares, such as Calibre E-book management, for the file format conversion, but again you need to see the extra trouble of doing the conversion.

The starting point for my ereader search was that I have numerous .epub books in Google Books, a number of .pdfs and word documents in Google Drive and Dropbox as well as Kindle books in .azw or .mobi format (which I do not even know how to download so that they could be saved into another device). And I would like to access them all. Without any extra trouble. Period. And of course it would be nice to read also the local newspaper from the device. So. What I was left with was an option to root Kindle or Nook (which is probably not a good idea since I am really not a computer wizard and because I am not interested in personalizing screensavers which is for some reason the most commonly cited reason for rooting...) or buy an eink device with Android as an operating system.

Ereaders with Android operating system

Since I live in Finland, I did not even try to find an eink device with Android from local stores, but did some furious googling and ended up with a pathetic number of options: Onyx Boox T68 and Icarus Illumina (of course when I say this, people come to me and point a number of other options, but this is best I could do with google within couple of hours).

Onyx Boox T68 sounded like a good option when looking at the specifications. However, it hosts an older Android (4.0) than the Illumina (4.2) and at least based on The eBook Reader's review, its touch screen is not very responsive nor accurate (with which I would probably lose my mind). In addition, it proved to be extremely difficult to find since even Onyx-boox's own website stated "out of stock". The only place I could find the device was a German store with only few pieces in stock and a pricetag of 167€. Hmpf.

Icarus Illumina I was somehow able to ignore for a while although it popped up in some of the searches. This was probably because it was not included in any of the ereader comparisons I read, so I somehow thought it is not worthy of consideration. On the verge of despair, I finally started reading Illumina's specs more thoroughly and watched goodereaders review of the device on Youtube which eventually ended my search of ereader with Android.

Buying the Icarus Illumina

The most convenient place for me to buy the Icarus Illumina was from the company's own website. I could find the device also from Amazon, but since the company is located in Netherlands (not too far from Finland) I assumed that the delivery time would be a fraction of one from US or UK. I placed the order on Sunday evening, received a status email "Shipped" on Monday before noon followed by an email from UPS saying that estimated delivery time is on Thursday. I was right.

Now I will just wait anxiously for the device to arrive and tell you more about the user experience then.

Kakkosolohuoneen löhösohva

Ihan ilmaista tämän uuden kodin laittaminen ei ole, kun huonejako mahdollisti kahdelle hifistelijälle kotiteatterihuoneen rakentamisen. Käytännössä se tarkoittaa kakkosolohuoneen sisustamista tv-tasoineen, elektroniikkoineen, sohvineen ja mattoineen. Sohvan valinta alakerrassa sijaitsevaan huoneeseen ei ollutkaan mikään ihan yksinkertainen tehtävä sillä portaikko, josta tavara piti viedä sisään on kapea ja osittain normaalia huonekorkeutta matalampi.

Etsin kuukausitolkulla sopivaa sohvaa tori.fi:stä, mutta vaatimuksena ollut vuodeominaisuus ja sohvan purettavuus tekivät tehtävästä käytännössä mahdottoman. Melko monta kierrosta ehdimme tehdä myös eri huonekalukaupoissa, tuloksetta, ennen kuin lopulta päädyimme ruotsalaisen, pieninä paloina toimitettaviin huonekaluihin erikoistuneen, yrityksen sohvamalliin.

Ja voi kun tuosta saa kädenkäänteessä ihanan löhösohvan vetämällä vain kahdesta kahvasta sänkyosan auki! Eipä meillä tuo taida "sohvana" ollakaan kuin siivouksen aikana ;). Nyt on enää hankkimatta ohut petauspatja, koska tuo keinonahka ei välttämättä ole se mukavin nukkumisalusta, vaikka lakanan siihen laittaisikin väliin. Sittenpä meillä onkin nukkumapaikat viidelle vieraalle, joten eiköhän ole aika järjesteää pyjamabileet, vai mitä?