Recently the launch of the new version of Ubuntu Touch OTA-23 was announced and in this new version, improvements and bug fixes have been made and also the Greeter redesign stands out, as well as the storage statistics and more were revised.
Community UBports, is the one that continues to maintain Ubuntu Touch for a variety of mobile devices. For those who were left with the idea that Ubuntu Touch had been abandoned for good, it really wasn't.
After Canonical's abandonment of Ubuntu Touch development, The UBports team led by Marius Gripsgard was the one who took back the reins to continue with the project.
Ubports is basically a foundation whose mission is to support collaborative development of Ubuntu Touch and promote widespread use from Ubuntu Touch. 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-23
Ubuntu Touch OTA-23 is still based on Ubuntu 16.04, but lately development efforts have been focused on preparing for the transition to Ubuntu 20.04.
Of the changes in OTA-23, it stands out that the initial support for FM radio, which for now can only be used on BQ E4.5, BQ E5 and Xiaomi Note 7 Pro devices (the range of compatible devices will be expanded in future versions). To be able to listen to the radio, all you have to do is connect the headphones, download the FM Radio application and that's it.
About the new function it is mentioned that several improvements are planned, and they consider it more as a proof of concept, as for why it does not work on other devices, this is because the kernel needs to configure some options.
Another of the changes that stands out in this new OTA is that in the messaging application improved MMS handling for large attachments and disabled the removal of the special characters “&”, “<”, and “>” from text messages.
In addition to this, it is also highlighted that the media player now supports hardware accelerated video decoding on the Jingpad A1 tablet.
We can also find the wireless display support, since it works in the protocol ethercast to allow setting up an external display for the device and working as on a desktop computer. Regarding this feature, it is important to note that not all devices can support this, so the person who worked on this port must enable it for each device separately.
On the other hand, it is also mentioned that all devices have a quick screen on/off feature, independent of ambient light, giving you quick access to your device and protects against accidental calls by keeping your phone in your pocket when it's not turned off.
SIf you are interested in knowing more about it About this new released version, you can check the details in the following link.
Get Ubuntu Touch OTA-23
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.