When Canonical told us about Ubuntu Touch and convergence, we were not few who rejoiced. I don't think there were few of us who felt a great disappointment when Mark Shuttleworth and company learned that it was not something viable, not if they wanted their desktop system to remain as good. But the mobile operating system that Canonical started is not dead; UBports took care of him and keep progressing.
Ubuntu Touch does not include as many or as outstanding novelties as other mobile operating systems such as Android or iOS, not even as many as Plasma Mobile, but it does improve with each launch. Also, today they started something new: although Ubuntu Touch has been running on AArch64 devices for a long time, its ISO images were still 32-bit. Starting today, too have started offering 64-bit ARM images.
Ubuntu Touch now better supports 4GB of RAM
Among the improvements offered by 64-bit images we have that they better support 4GB of RAM, which applications open faster or that offer better performance thanks to the ARMv8 architecture. Looking to the future, it also opens the door to 64-bit applications that are more powerful than 32-bit ones.
As UBports explains in its informative note, right now you can use the Ubuntu Touch 64-bit ARM edition the Sony Xperia X and the OnePlus 3 and 3T. It is only a first step, but an important one, which is the beginning of the transition from 32-bit to 64-bit.
On the other hand, lUBports developers continuing to develop Ubuntu Touch have also incorporated Mir 1.x and newer Unity 8 into their development channel, have released an updated installer and its Telegram client has also been updated, because we must not forget that this type of device also serves to communicate with our loved ones. Slowly but with good lyrics, Ubuntu Touch continues to improve.
Will it be compatible with more devices?
And will it have WhatsApp?
Hello Felipe,
The devices we now support are these:
https://devices.ubuntu-touch.io
We have Anbox (not available for all devices) for whatsapp and other Android applications, it is not very mature but it allows us to get out of the way.
Hello Pablinux,
I do not understand very well why you say this:
"Ubuntu Touch does not include as many or as outstanding novelties as other mobile operating systems such as Android or iOS, not even as many as Plasma Mobile"
You could argue it to me, I say it by the one of Plasma Mobile.
By the way, it would be nice if you renew the images that you put when you talk about Ubuntu Touch, they are very old and I think they are not even real, I think they are a Canonical proof of concept.
Thank you.
Well I guess it's because there is an update every two months.
In plasma the truth is that I have not heard news (if you say so I believe it), but it is normal that it has since the system unfortunately needs it since it cannot be used right now.
Hello, do you know when the first trial version will be available?
Hi Ciro, what trial version?
I have installed version 14.4 in virtualbox and I tried to follow the steps but cannot create the instance I get an error, who has an image to use in virtualbox, I took this system to present it in the class and it doesn't work for me