Full page refresh is still slow, but the interfaces have gotten better to mitigate that a little. I've never used a Kindle, but on Kobos there's a scrubbing interface that appears that shows pages about 1/8th size so you can flip through them visually a lot faster (due to partial refresh), and the page location scrollbar places enlarged dots around places you've been recently, so it's not hard to flip back and forth between a few places (e.g., your current reading location and an endnotes section).