Ubuntu Touch OTA-22 Rolling Out Now with Initial FM Radio Support, WebGL Support

Ubuntu Touch OTA-22

The UBports Foundation released today the OTA-22 software update for their open-source and free Ubuntu Touch mobile operating system for all supported Linux smartphones and tablets.

Ubuntu Touch OTA-22 is here one and a half months after the OTA-21 update to add yet another layer of improvements, as well as to pave the way for new, upcoming features, such as FM Radio support to allow for real analog radio listening on supported devices. For now, only the daemon implementation landed in the OTA-22 release, while an FM Radio application should be available in the app store in the next few weeks.

Ubuntu Touch OTA-22 also brings good news for owners of other devices thanks to the implementation of WebGL support, which allows for faster 3D rendering. Moreover, QQC2 apps now follow the system theme and camera support landed in the Morph web browser to finally allow users to make video calls.

“This is probably the most important feature of this OTA,” said UBports. “Many people have begged us to make video calling an option. Now, this is still only in the browser, but we think it already can be a great relief. And it is the door-opener to video calling in apps.”

There’s also good news for Volla Phone X owners in the OTA-22 update, which adds support for the fingerprint reader and fixes various issues that users encountered with the previous release. This is all possible thanks to the switch to a newer base for the system image, Halium 10.

Furthermore, OnePlus 5 and OnePlus 5T owners can now enjoy a complete Ubuntu Touch port that works out of the box, and Google Pixel 3a and Google Pixel 3a XL owners received better sound quality and volume control with this update, as well as a so-called “booster mode” enabled that will limit the number of CPUs and configure other battery saving options when the screen is turned off.

Last but not least, the OTA-22 update adds rotation support to the greeter (lock screen), as well as a new layout for the emergency bar at the bottom, and the Dialer app received dialpad autocomplete so you can access the contacts you want to call much faster.

A few bugs were squashed as well to prevent MMS image cropping in the Messaging App, improve the shader cache for QML, make the fingerprint reader work on OnePlus 5T devices and allow them to return to sleep when a push notification arrives, as well as to enforce camera permissions on some devices.

The Ubuntu Touch OTA-22 update is now rolling out to all supported devices listed on the release announcement page, which also contains information about known issues for some older devices that users need to be aware of before updating.

Last updated 2 years ago

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