UBports Foundation announced a call for testing for the upcoming Ubuntu Touch OTA-18 software update for Ubuntu Phone devices, which promises various performance improvements and updated apps.
Ubuntu Touch OTA-18 promises to be yet another maintenance update to the Ubuntu Touch mobile operating system developed by UBports for Linux-powered smartphones, bringing various performance improvements to make the entire system more snappy on all supported devices.
To achieve that, the team managed to implement a way for Ubuntu Touch to scale down and display wallpapers without affecting the performance of the system, which mostly benefits BQ Aquaris E4.5 users using the default wallpaper. For other devices, the RAM savings will vary depending resolution of the screen and wallpaper.
In addition to these performance improvements, the Ubuntu Touch OTA-18 release will feature an updated Messages app with support for stickers and improved message storing, as well as an updated Morph web browser with the ability to open a new tab from an existing one next to the original one, support for keyboard view on blank new tabs, and local navigation history.
The timers and alarms were improved as well in the upcoming release to snooze missed alarms by default, and the media-hub service for playing audio and video content has been rewritten to be easier to work on and extend in future releases.
“We’d appreciate if you tested all of your applications which play native audio or video content (not the browser or webapps) and let us know if you find any strange behavior in them,” said the UBports team.
If you’d like to help UBports with the testing of the Ubuntu Touch OTA-18 update, please follow the instructions on the call for testing announcement to install the pre-release version on your devices. However, please keep in mind that this is an unstable version that may contain bugs, so if that’s not your thing, wait for the final release on July 14th, 2021.
Meanwhile, UBports works on porting Ubuntu Touch to the Ubuntu 20.04 LTS (Focal Fossa) base, and they’re developing a tool called the UBports Platform Development Kit that integrates useful tools for developers to test the upcoming Ubuntu Touch 20.04 images in a virtual machine on Linux, as well as Intel and ARM64 macOS.
Image credits: UBports/PINE64
