Ubuntu Touch OTA-5 arrives with a new browser and more improvements

After a few months of hard work, UBports announced a few days ago the availability of a new version, which is Free Touch OTA-5 for all Ubuntu Touch compatible phone devices.

Community UBports, is the one that continues to maintain Ubuntu Touch for a variety of mobile devices. For those who were left with the idea that Ubuntu Touch had been abandoned for good, it really wasn't.

After the abandonment of Ubuntu Touch development by Canonical, The UBports team led by Marius Gripsgard was the one who took back the reins to continue with the project.

Ubports is basically a foundation whose mission is to support the collaborative development of Ubuntu Touch and promote widespread use. from Ubuntu Touch. The foundation provides legal, financial and organizational support to the entire community.

It also serves as an independent legal entity to which community members can contribute code, funding, and other resources, with the knowledge that their contributions will be kept for the public benefit.

The team is small and the work progresses slowly but Several OTAs have already been launched, the last one, OTA-4, was on August 27. OTA-4 marked the transition from Ubuntu 15.04 (Vivid Vervet) to Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus)

New web browser in Ubuntu Touch OTA-5

This OTA-5 gives more stability to the system, introduces new features and leaves much hope for the growth of the operating system.

The highlights of the new version of Ubuntu Touch OTA-5 They include a new browser which has the name Morph and happens to replace the old Oxide Browser.

This new web browser Morph is based on a newer version of the Chromium engine and guarantees better scaling thanks to Qt Automatic Scaling in the system.

In addition, it comes with new scaling functions to display content in appropriate sizes on various devices, including phones and tablets, as well as to display websites the way they are designed.

community art

Free Touch OTA-5 also offers support for KDE's Kirigami 2 QtQuick controls For mobile devices, this support allows application developers to manipulate and draw various visual parts of applications.

This support serves to offer a better integration of Plasma Mobile applications in Ubuntu Touch, as well as loads of new wallpapers, ringtones and notification tones to replace the old ones.

Faced with this new launch, the UBports development group said:

»While many have already joined the community on 16.04 with OTA-4, in addition to the long-term support of bottom-up Ubuntu development, OTA-5 will include a more stable experience, new tweaks and new features to showcase this next stage of development. Ubuntu Touch «.

How to get this new OTA-5?

Ubuntu Phone users using version OTA-4 can now update their devices to OTA-5 update Through the update option found in "System Configuration> Updates".

After installation, your Ubuntu Touch device will automatically reboot for the OTA-5 update to install properly.

Now for those who are Ubuntu Touch OTA-3 users, they can also upgrade to Ubuntu Touch OTA-5 directly without going through OTA-4, the configuration will guide them to configure their devices for the new Ubuntu 16.04 base.

Finally we can highlight that the next patch, OTA-6 will be arriving next NovemberThis is subject to unforeseen events, if not and that the development goes as planned, the OTA-6 will arrive on November 23.

If you want to know if your computer has compatibility to be able to install Ubuntu Touch on it, I recommend you go to the official Ubports website and in its devices section you will be able to see those that are officially supported.

As well as some others that are maintained and updated by third parties. The link is this.


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  1.   elcondonrotodegnu said

    Thanks for the article David, but those who are in OTA-3 do have to go through OTA-4. The rest all good. 😉