< the skull

AROUND EREADERS
===============
2026-06-28

I am on my third Kindle now. I do not remember the model of the first one well
enough to specify it, but it was a very old one, from the early generations. I
am an avid reader, and when Amazon decided to launch those e-readers, I got
excited right away. It was getting hard to walk around with books inside my
backpack, and if I was carrying a folder, it was even worse.

When the Paperwhite version came out, I did not think twice. I bought it. And my
first one, I gave to my cousin (that is why I do not remember the model). I fell
in love with the Paperwhite because it was thinner, but in terms of
functionality, there was not that much difference. It had a better texture, and
the backlight was completely comfortable.

I used it for about two or three years until one day I saw that Amazon was once
again going to innovate with the launch of a color model, the Colorsoft. I got
even more excited. I had thousands of comics that I used to read on the PC. What
I needed was exactly that.

I waited one year after the launch to buy it. I wanted people to review it first
and talk about their impressions. Then came the Colorsoft Signature, and the
time had come. Coincidentally, Amazon, on the day I bought it, was giving a
discount (I think it was Amazon week or something like that). I paid R$1,500. I
am not sure of the price in dollars, but certainly in reais, like everything in
Brazil, it was probably much more expensive than buying it in the United States
or anywhere else beyond our borders.

It was perfect. But something disappointed me. It was the lack of native support
for comic books, just that. Fortunately, this could be solved with software
developed by the community and available on GitHub [1].

Around the same time, the “hackers” released the jailbreak [2] for the Kindle,
but I could not test it. It was compatible with the model I no longer had, which
was my older Kindle, but I no longer had it for a good reason.

Kindle Colorsoft Signature

Anyway, after filling it with books and delighting myself with the dear
Colorsoft Signature, I saw something online about a device that was being
produced in China, called XTeink. I thought it was some parallel thing, and I
did not pay much attention. But a few days later, the internet, or at least the
places where I browsed, was talking about nothing else.

I was taken over by a lot of curiosity. It was not an expensive device, and
everyone spoke well of it. Not to mention that it was extremely portable. I went
to AliExpress and, without thinking too much, bought the X4. A joy that did not
last long. A few days later, I received an email saying that my purchase had
been canceled. So I went back to the website to buy it again and saw the listing
this time for the X3, but it was marked as a new release. I did a brief search,
because I had found it strange that the X4 had been released before the X3, and
in fact this X3 was the newer version.

Besides the size, apparently nothing had changed. But since it was the most
recent one, I bought it.

XTeink X3

Then I realized that I had bought it in pre-order and that what I had seen about
it were only reviews. But that was not a problem. It was January 2026. I
received the product at the end of April / beginning of May.

It arrived in a modest little box, with a screen protector and a case. I was
charmed right away. As soon as I turned it on, came the new surprise: it was in
Chinese. And the screen displayed a QR Code to download the app. The surprise
that should have been good turned into a mix of frustration and the urge to
throw it against the wall.

It was literally the Chinese version, meant to be used in China, and it needed a
Chinese phone.

So I would need to find a way to get a Chinese number or change the firmware.
And I researched. The available firmwares I found taught how to change the stock
firmware of the X4 and the first-gen X3, but they did not mention the new X3
(the connection methods and USB are a little different). Until I found out how.
The process was similar to the others, but with peculiarities I will not talk
about here, in this post.

And I went ahead and changed the stock firmware for another one. My happiness
came back. It turned on and, even better, it had Brazilian Portuguese
translation. I used it tirelessly for one month. Excellent texture and OPDS
support, which allowed me to connect my Calibre to the device.

Then I started thinking about why I had not bought this before, and I had the
idea of checking whether there was something better than the Kindle Colorsoft.

That is when I discovered Bigme. A wonderful e-reader tablet. I was enchanted
after watching some videos on YouTube. It had everything a tablet could have,
but it was an e-reader. It had compatibility with Play Store apps, it had its
own apps, and it came with a pen. Yes, you can write on it, and the latency is
almost zero.

Bigme B7

I bought it. And after some customs problems, the device arrived. I can say that
I was impressed enough after using it for only a few hours, and it has been
three days since it arrived. I installed it, configured it, uninstalled things,
installed more apps, did everything, prepared my agenda, etc., etc., etc.

I must confess that the Kindle is a robust device, but it was the others that
are making me feel happy.

Links:
  [1] https://github.com/ciromattia/kcc
  [2] https://github.com/KindleModding/WinterBreak


< the skull