Ubuntu Touch OTA 18 has already been released and these are its news

The new Ubuntu Touch OTA 18 update has just been released which is still based on Ubuntu 16.04 and of the changes in OTA-18 that stand out the most is the revised implementation of the Media-hub service, as well as various general optimizations for performance and memory consumption and more.

For those who are still unaware of Ubuntu Touch, you should know that this is a mobile platform distribution originally developed by Canonical which later withdrew and passed into the hands of the UBports project.

Main news of Ubuntu Touch OTA 18

As mentioned at the beginning, this new update of Ubuntu Touch continues on Ubuntu 16.04 version, but it is mentioned that with the efforts of the developers it has been possible to focus future work to prepare for the transition to Ubuntu 20.04.

Of the changes that stand out from this new OTA, a revised implementation of the Media-hub service, which is responsible for playing sound and video applications. In the new Media-hub, stability and extensibility issues resolved, the structure of the code has been adapted to simplify the incorporation of new functions.

It is also highlighted that general performance optimizations were made and memory consumption, intended for comfortable work on devices equipped with 1 GB of RAM.

En particular, background image rendering efficiency has been increased- By storing only one copy of an image with a resolution corresponding to the screen resolution in RAM, compared to OTA-17, the RAM consumption has been reduced by at least 30 MB when setting your own background image and up to 60 MB for devices with low screen resolution.

On the other hand, the automatic display of the on-screen keyboard was provided when opening a new tab in the browser, in addition to that the on-screen keyboard offers the possibility of entering the symbol «°» (degree), as well as added keyboard shortcut Ctrl + Alt + T to call terminal emulator.

In the alarm clock, the pause time for the "let me sleep a little more" mode is now counted in relation to the pressing of the button, and not to the start of the call. If there is no reaction to the signal, the alarm does not go off, it just stops for a moment.

Of the other changes that stand out:

• Added support for stickers to the messaging app.
• Lomiri's wallpaper has been rendered much more efficient in this version.

Finally the developers comment on the transition to Ubuntu 20.04:

Our previous posts have alluded to a slowdown in Ubuntu Touch development in Xenial while we prepare a Ubuntu Touch version based on Ubuntu 20.04. It seems that the legendary slowdown was underestimated, if anything .

It is true that the little team of people who know the internals of Ubuntu Touch have worried about things other than OTA-18. Ratchanan has focused on getting Lomiri, the surrounding infrastructure, and the keyboard running on systemd on Ubuntu 20.04; in creating UT images based on 20.04; and in many other tasks to count.

Get Ubuntu Touch OTA-18

For those who are interested in this new Ubuntu Touch OTA-18 update, you should know that it has support for OnePlus One, Fairphone 2, Nexus 4, Nexus 5, Meizu MX4 / PRO 5, VollaPhone, Bq Aquaris E5 / E4.5 / M10 , Sony Xperia X / XZ, OnePlus 3 / 3T, Xiaomi Redmi 4X, Huawei Nexus 6P, Sony Xperia Z4 tablet, Google Pixel 3a, OnePlus Two, F (x) tec Pro1 / Pro1 X, Xiaomi Redmi Note 7, Samsung Galaxy Note 4, Xiaomi Mi A2 and Samsung Galaxy S3 Neo + (GT-I9301I).

For existing Ubuntu Touch users on the stable channel they will receive the OTA update through the System Configuration Updates screen.

While, in order to receive the update immediately, just enable ADB access and run the following command on 'adb shell':

sudo system-image-cli -v -p 0 --progress dots

With this the device will download the update and install it. This process may take a while, depending on your download speed.