Ubuntu Touch OTA-12 Released with Lomiri, Revamped Home Screen, and More

Ubuntu Touch OTA-12

The UBports Foundation announced today the general availability of the highly anticipated Ubuntu Touch OTA-12 software update for Ubuntu Phone devices.

Many months in the works, Ubuntu Touch OTA-12 is a massive update that ships with Lomiri (Unity8) by default. The version of Lomiri included in OTA-12 is built upon one of the last Unity8 released from Canonical.

The inclusion of Lomiri is already a major change since it introduces new functionality and new interaction models to the interface, including the Application Drawer.

But, with this change, another one gets removed. The Dash and Scopes are no longer available in OTA-12, which gives Ubuntu Phone users a brand new home screen. The Unity8 Dash was replaced by a blank background.

The Morph web browser also saw some attention and it now only deletes the private browsing session when using the Private Browsing mode, a new option to allow the deletion of cookies, and the ability to for web apps created with the webapp container to download files.

Morph also comes with a fit-to-width feature that automatically zooms a web page to avoid any rendering issues and better handles downdown elements.

Other changes include the Mir 1.2 display server with support for Wayland clients, a new style for the default colors with more contrast, as well as a new bottom-swipe gesture for the touch keyboard, along with the ability to switch between selection and cursor mode by double-tapping in the blank area on the editing overlay.

Moreover, there’s now vibration support for OnePlus One devices when pressing keys, 4G support on Fairphone 2 devices will now work out-of-the-box, devices with a multi-color LED can now use it to display charge status, and Nexus 5, OnePlus One, and Fairphone 2 devices now feature Anbox support.

“This update has been in the works for over a year,” said UBports. “Many people have helped us get here, including the Mir team at Canonical and what was the Ubuntu Phone Team before the project was dropped, and our amazing and vibrant community. Truly, thank you all for your work. We could not have done this without you.”

As usual, Ubuntu Touch OTA-12 is sent to users as a rolling update, which means it won’t be available for everyone at the same time. The rollout should take up to a couple of days.

To update your Ubuntu Phone device, go to System Settings > Updates and refresh the list of updates until you see the OTA-12 release.

Keep in mind that your device will be rebooted automatically for the update to be installed. To see if you’re running OTA-12, go to System Settings > About > OS. Here’s OTA-12 in pictures, courtesy of UBports Foundation!

Last updated 4 years ago

Buy Me a Coffee at ko-fi.com