Just a week ago, UBports started asking the community to test the Release Candidate of the Ubuntu Touch OTA-20. Although I didn't have much faith, I did have the slightest hope that they would say it would be based on Ubuntu 20.04, but no. Neither the Release Candidate nor the stable version announced today They are. Like in the previous deliveryUbuntu Touch is still based on Ubuntu 16.04, without support since April of this year, although it seems that it will be the last to do so.
All devices that have Ubuntu Touch installed should receive this OTA-20 from system settings, all except those of PINE64. And no, it is not that pineapple devices are not going to receive all these news; they just use a different numbering, but those using the stable channel should get that soon as well.
Highlights of Ubuntu Touch OTA-20
- Notification led support for Halium 9-based devices. Some of the newer ones may not be supported.
- Support for Khmer and Bengali fonts.
- Possibility to configure a personalized notification sound.
- New devices supported to install the operating system: Xiaomi Redmi 9 and 9 Prime (lancelot), Xiaomi Redmi Note 9 (merlin), Note 9 Pro (joyuese), Note 9 Pro Max (excalibur), Note 9S (curtana), Xiaomi Poco M2 Pro (gram) and Pixel 2 (walleye). Mind you, the Pixel 2 has some battery life issues, so it may not be quite ready to be an everyday device.
- A regression has been corrected that prevented the so-called trust promts from appearing when an application required access to certain hardware for the first time, such as the microphone, the GPS, or the camera.
- Fixed a bug in its CalDAV layer that prevented synchronization with servers that used the Let's Encrypt certificate.
- In what was a strange bug, Vollaphone users were unable to reject a second incoming call without ending the current one.
OTA-20 is the Latest Ubuntu Touch update and it is progressively appearing in the settings of the different compatible devices. Users of a PineTab or a PinePhone will receive the news soon, but remember that the numbering will be different. If nothing happens, the OTA-21 will already be based on Ubuntu 20.04. And, by the way, this is the reason why today's news is less than what we are used to.