The UBports project, which took over the development of the mobile platform Ubuntu Touch after Canonical stepped away from it, has released firmware update OTA-23 (over-the-air). The project is also developing an experimental port of the Unity 8 desktop, which has been renamed to Lomiri.
The Ubuntu Touch OTA-23 update is formulated for smartphones BQ E4.5/E5/M10/U Plus, Cosmo Communicator, F(x)tec Pro1, Fairphone 2/3, Google Pixel 2XL/3a, Huawei Nexus 6P, LG Nexus 4/5, Meizu MX4/Pro 5, Nexus 7 2013, OnePlus 2/3/5/6/One, Samsung Galaxy Note 4/S3 Neo+, Sony Xperia X/XZ/Z4, Vollaphone, Xiaomi Mi A2/A3, Xiaomi Poco F1, Xiaomi Redmi 3s/3x/3sp/4X/7, Xiaomi Redmi Note 7/7 Pro. Separately, updates without the "OTA-23" tag will be prepared for Pine64 PinePhone and PineTab devices. Compared to the previous version, support for Asus Zenfone Max Pro M1, Xiaomi Poco M2 Pro, Google Pixel 2, and Google Pixel 3a XL smartphones has been added.
Ubuntu Touch OTA-23 is still based on Ubuntu 16.04, but recently developers have focused their efforts on preparing for the transition to Ubuntu 20.04. Notable changes in OTA-23 include:
- Initial support for FM radio has been implemented, which can currently only be used on BQ E4.5, BQ E5, and Xiaomi Note 7 Pro devices (the range of supported devices will expand in future releases).
- In the messaging application, MMS handling for large attachments has been improved, and the trimming of special characters "&", "" from text messages has been disabled.
- The media player now supports hardware-accelerated video decoding on the Jingpad A1 tablet.
- The Aethercast protocol is now available for connecting to external displays wirelessly.
- Fast screen wake and sleep is provided on all devices, regardless of ambient lighting, allowing quicker access to the device and protecting against accidental calls from a phone that hasn’t yet turned off when put in a pocket.
Source: opennet.ru
