The braille note touch plus finally get an update after three whole years. What is your opinions on this major update?

In my honest opinion humanware should release a new braille note touch plus with an updated android operating system.
The current touch plus runs on android 8.1 where whereas the Braille Sense 6 runs on android 12 which is newer.
For people I'd recommend the braille sense 6 over the touch plus.
Does it have some bugs yes but it's far better than the touch plus and you can do a lot more with it in terms of connecting external devices and all that.

The braille note touch has 8 cells less than your traditional display but costsmore than entry level embosser just for an infinitely worse outdated tablet. I'll never understand that why they are still not updating android inside. It will be just easier for their own devs to do stuff on recent versions.

As someone who relies heavily on G-suite apps on the BNT+ I won't be fully satisfied until they release a device compatible with the latest Android updates. My Braille Note also turns off anywhere between 20 and 50% and just will not do anything until plugged in. It is not dead, if it were dead it'd at least pretend to turn on, it'll say starting keysoft for a long time then shut off. This device will just turn off and not do anything at all no mater how long I press the power button for. To be honest it's 3-4 years old and I may need a new one...but who knows the new update might stall the old-device behavior for a while LOL

Updating Android on a BrailleSense or BrailleNote is way harder than on a normal phone. These devices don't just run Android. They have a whole extra system sitting on top of it, the custom layer that makes braille input, output, and accessibility features work. So when Android updates, it's not just "install and go." The company has to rebuild and re-tune that entire braille system so it works smoothly with the new version. That's a huge amount of work, and it's why updates come slowly, if at all. Selvas themselves admitted that even getting the BrailleSense 6 up to Android 12 was a real struggle. And if jumping to 12 was that difficult, imagine trying to get all the way to Android 16. Four version leaps? That would probably break their overhead entirely. By the time they managed to rebuild everything for that, Android 18 would already be around the corner. That was one of the huge caveats of this design from the start, and honestly, it's why these devices should have just been built as a straight-up Android braille tablet instead of layering an overhead OS on top.

Not underestimating the dev time here, but they can still just ship whatever newer android they easily can (aosp) and just install keysoft apps as a launcher on top and let people access stock unpolished android if they want can't they?

I just got the update for my braillenot touch plus this afternoon. It seems like the only thing they gave us was a few new apps, with no major updates to apps that come installed on the device. One issue I've had ever since I got my braillenote touch plus is after I add a word to the dictionary, the spellchecker in keyword still thinks the word is wrong. Its small things like this I want to get fixed, not giving us new apps every three or four years.

If it were only that simple. Issue is, most of those apps aren't technically even Android. They're, I'd say part Android part overhead. Android enough to be compatible, but not native. Remove the overhead and those apps stop working altogether.

Yeah I mostly buy this. I talked to humanware support a while ago and they advised me against routing the touch plus, quite strongly I might add, as keysoft is a third party ROM. I imagine lots of their Braille specific stuff needed a whole different back end, I don't know. I do believe my pld galaxy phone with the same processor got up to android nine, I don't remember for sure though, could have ended on eight as well. My main thing with these notetakers isn't even the android being outdated, that could be remedied with robust apps, it's more the lack of recent security updates making it hard to connect to university or office wifi etc.

At this point, they should discontinue the product if they're unwilling and/or unable to provide Android updates at least once every two or three years. I'll give Selvas credit for updating from Android 10 to 12. The Touch should be running at least 12 or 13 by this point. The device has been available since 2019, and they've done absolutely nothing to the underlying OS. I realize it takes time to update these devices, and that's fine. What were they doing for the last 3 years? Did it really take that long just to build a few applications and correct minor bugs? Of course, we all know Humanware has a history of making promises they can't and/or won't keep. I'll never purchase another product from them ever again. Don't worry though, they'll release another unit running Android 11 or 12 and never update it either.

Look, if you don't wanna buy from any companies who don't keep promises, you should just write a list of companies you *can* buy from. Don't worry, it'll be nice and short. LOL
Personally I understand what Tunmi is saying. on a sidenote though the security patch is from 2019 which makes me wanna be careful when browsing the web, and hopefully humanWare can do some security related things.

I'm going to assume that Chris's question wasn't rhetorical.

I imagine a lot of development time since the last update for the Touch Plus has been spent on the Monarch. Aside from it, HumanWare, unlike SELVAS, has a lot more products under active development. These include the Victor Reader Stream 3, Victor Reader Stratus 2 (i.e. the new generation of NLS talking book players), StellarTrek, Brailliant BI X, Prodigi for Windows, and likely other products I'm aware of.

I’ll let others decide whether spreading their development efforts across so many products makes sense for a company of HumanWare’s size.

Incredible.

That's a fair point about the company working on tons of products which yeah, probably isn't a good idea given their size and limited resources. I thought the BrailleNote was supposed to be their flagship product. It's appalling how neglected it is. The last security patch for Android Oreo was released in October 2021 if my information is accurate. Chrome requires Android 10 or later, so that makes the device even more insecure. Even if you don't care about security updates, you'll run into increasing compatibility issues by running outdated software which you'll eventually care about when you can't do something important. They claim it's supposed to get you through school and College or something like that, but if they can't and/or more likely won't put the resources into keeping it competitive with mainstream technology, of course it's going to fall behind just like the old Windows CE devices.

I still sometimes get a notification that says "Google Chrome: fast and secure" has an available update. Maybe it's some HumanWare version of Chrome. Either way it's not very fast, and also probably not very secure...

why?

you can do so mutch with a normal cumputer or phone, most screenreaders have braille display support so why are people still using the braille note devices?

Last year, when a similar question was asked about why the BrailleSense still exists, I wrote a comment explaining why some people might find it useful despite other technology being available. Some of what I wrote applies to other braille notetakers, though I certainly wouldn't encourage people to purchase the BrailleNote Touch Plus because it's now a six-year-old product.

I looked at the comment that was linked to in the previous comment and I agree. These devices are supposed to bridge the gap between mainstream services and ease of use for the blind, so it baffles me why they refuse to do absolutely anything about the underlying OS which is in fact very important. I feel sorry for people that purchased the original Touch. Humanware had the opportunity to do better with this device, and they've demonstrated they can't and/or won't. If they release another device in the very near future, I wouldn't trust them to keep it updated either given their track record.
Of course, the argument can be made that this is primarily marketed at educational institutions, but that doesn't give them an excuse to neglect it the way they have. If they can't or won't commit to keeping it competitive, they should admit this to their customers and discontinue the product rather than continuing to sell a product with increasingly outdated software and claiming it's the best thing since sliced bread.

Having said that, it doesn't mean the device has to always be running the absolute latest version of Android, but it should at the very least be running something that's still actively supported by many apps. Android 8.1 is from December of 2017, so it may technically still work with some things, but the reality is that many apps have moved on. Why isn't the device running Android 10 or 11 at the bare minimum? Isn't there something in the Google Play terms that says your device needs to be reasonably secure to remain certified? I wonder if they're ignoring warnings from Google stating Android 8 has been EOL for a long time, and it's time to move on?

In my opinion, the Monarch is the successor to this device.