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The last major update of KDE’s Plasma Mobile UI for mobile devices in 2020 is here and it’s packed with numerous improvements across various apps and some new features.
Plasma Mobile, the beautiful user interface for Linux phones and tablets, received quite some love from the KDE developers in 2020, especially that the KDE Community partnered with PINE64 to deliver the PinePhone KDE Community Edition smartphone.
So it’s obvious that KDE wants its gorgeous Plasma Mobile UI to end the year strong, and the new major update doesn’t disappoint. The biggest change is the addition of a new theme for Plasma mobile applications that follows KDE’s new design goalsĀ to make Plasma Mobile faster and less resource-hungry.
According to KDE, the Dolphin file manager now starts with up to 25 percent faster than before thanks to the new theme, which uses the latest QtQuick Controls 2 technologies. Also, it would appear that the RAM usage has been decreased for several apps, like Kirigami Gallery which now uses 177MB of RAM instead of 253MB.
Another major change is the addition of a new chat client called NeoChat. The app uses the Matrix protocol and features support for sending and accepting invitations, the ability to remember the last room you’ve joined, read markers, support for showing your last read message, and a built-in image editor, which will support filters in future updates.
Other new features include support for actions to the notifications that appear on the lockscreen, a new toggle on the shell’s top panel to enable Night Color, support for color schemes to the virtual keyboard, including Breeze Light and Breeze Dark, as well as a redesigned Dialer app.
Plasma Mobile now also lets users set a new password in the Settings app, and the usability of the Wi-Fi settings have been improved by adding a dialog that will appear when asking for a password.
Furthermore, Plasma Mobile’s web browser Angelfish now has a built-in ad blocker, support for notifications, and a download manager. Also improved is KClock’s sidebar, which now features a header that’s consistent with other Kirigami apps, as well as the Kalk calculator app, which now uses a sidebar for switching between views and has a much-improved unit conversion page.
Okular’s sidebar was improved as well to open automatically on wider screens and the app now prompts users with a small placeholder message and a button for opening documents faster.
KDE’s updated Plasma Mobile UI will soon make its way into the software repositories of various distributions that offer a version for mobile devices, so you’ll be able to enjoy the new features and improvements shortly.
Last updated 3 years ago
