Korean font discrepancy

Question

I purchased a textbook with a mixture of Korean and English.

The Korean font shown in Kindle on my Nexus 5 phone is simple and readable, but in Kindle on my Samsung S4 tablet the Korean font is unusual, like handwriting, and renders the book almost useless for me as a beginner. I need the tablet sized screen for the book to be useful.

Comparing my two devices, the system Korean font is the same simple style, so I'm unsure why the Kindle Korean fonts are so different.

Changing the Kindle English font has no effect on the Korean :-)

Is there a way I can change the Korean font for Android Kindle somehow?

Android app on Samsung Tab S running 4.4

Thanks! Danny.

Answer 1

The short version is that you need to upgrade your tablet to a newer version of Android.

The long version is that the font rendering changed in Android, upgrading text from "unusual, like handwriting" to "simple and readable". At the beginning of 2013, Adobe donated their CCF rasterizer to FreeType (the font rendering library used in Android and Linux in general), which integrated the changes for version 2.5. It wasn't until the end of 2014 that the updated FreeType library was merged into Android's repository, so the earliest version of Android to get the update is 5 (Lollipop).

The Nexus line of devices generally gets Android updates really quickly. Other Android devices often lag behind by several months or just have support quietly dropped. If your tablet still has the problem and doesn't have any updates available, then switching to a third-party version of Android (e.g., CyanogenMod or Replicant) is probably your only option. Be aware that this could easily brick your tablet if everything isn't done perfectly, so you do it at your own risk.