The new version of Ubuntu Touch OTA-21 was recently released , and this new version includes improvements and bug fixes, as well as a redesigned Greeter, revised storage statistics, and more.
The UBports community continues to maintain Ubuntu Touch for a variety of mobile devices. For those who thought Ubuntu Touch had been definitively abandoned, that's not actually the case.
After Canonical abandoned the development of Ubuntu Touch, the UBports team, led by Marius Gripsgard, took over to continue the project.
Ubports is essentially a foundation whose mission is to support the collaborative development of Ubuntu Touch and promote its widespread use . The foundation provides legal, financial, and organizational support to the entire community.
It also serves as an independent legal entity to which community members can contribute code, funding, and other resources, with the knowledge that their contributions will be kept for the public benefit.
About Ubuntu Touch OTA-21
This new version of Ubuntu Touch OTA-21 is still based on Ubuntu 16.04, but more recently, the developers' efforts have focused on preparing for the upgrade to Ubuntu 20.04.
Among the changes in OTA-21, the screen with information on the fullness of the drives has been redesigned , the number of categories has been expanded, and the accuracy of the information on free space in the system partitions has been improved.
It is also mentioned that the appearance of the interface displayed before unlocking the screen has been modified, providing several different styles, which are selected depending on whether a PIN or password is used for unlocking.
Furthermore, it is also noted that it has been prepared for use on devices with the Halium 10 middleware layer, which provides a low-level layer to simplify hardware support. For devices compatible with Halium 9, plugins are included to enable magnetometer and compass sensors.
The Media-Hub service, which handles playing audio and video applications, has been rewritten , as well as the associated client library, which has been translated to use Qt classes to reduce the number of dependencies and simplify codebase maintenance.
And also mentioned the rework also allowed us to reduce the size of the qtubuntu-media plugin (provided by the QtMultimedia API) on disk, get rid of unnecessary layers and reduce memory consumption.
Of the errors and problems solved:
- Adding a new APN entry on a Halium 9 device will now be properly preserved
- MMS can also be retrieved when in 2G network mode only
- MMS that could not be downloaded will now be displayed with a red warning text and the user has the option to try to download them again. There is a little problem with that - make sure the network connection is established before hitting the download button, otherwise the connection might be tried forever and there will be no real timeout to reset the model user interface. This will be fixed in the next version
- User metrics (the statistics information inside the lock screen circle) were showing nothing on Halium 9 devices
- Selecting contacts in the messaging app now works correctly when an item (such as a contact) is shared on it: contacts can be added with the plus sign, before this finally shows the recipient details and does not add them to the field To:.
- Also fixed a frequent crash in the messaging app at startup, which seems to have affected only certain devices
Finally, if you are interested in learning more about this new version, you can find the details at the following link.
Get Ubuntu Touch OTA-21
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.
To receive the update immediately , simply enable ADB access and run the following command over '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.