Ubuntu Tablet users will also receive the update

Sep 19, 2016 21:00 GMT  ·  By

Today, September 19, 2016, Canonical was supposed to launch the OTA-13 update for Ubuntu Phone and Ubuntu Tablet devices, but it didn't happen. Lukasz Zemczak is back, and he informs us that the update should arrive for all users later this week.

However, Canonical did publish the complete list of new features implemented in the Ubuntu Touch OTA-13 update, and we would like to tell you all about them. Let's start with the copy/paste support, which has been updated to work with legacy X11 applications as well.

There are also lots of visual improvements to offer newcomers a better out-of-the-box experience, such as a new panel for selecting a hardware keyboard, an updated emoji keyboard, a new keyboard system indicator, a brand-new Updates panel in System Settings, and a revamped Notifications panel that now offers better per-app settings.

Meet repowerd, Ubuntu Touch's new power daemon

Another awesome feature introduced by the Ubuntu Touch OTA-13 update is the implementation of a new and more efficient power daemon, namely repowerd, which we were the first to report about a while ago. Thanks to repowerd, you should notice longer battery life on your Ubuntu Phone or Ubuntu Tablet device.

The list of goodies continues with screen management improvements, better proximity detection, an experimental storage framework, support for syncing multiple calendars, updated Oxide video player to version 1.16.8, adoption of the GStreamer 1.8.2 multimedia framework, and new keyboards for Latvian and Korean languages.

Last but not least, OTA-13 will ship with a new UbuntuMetrics library written in C++, which can be used for monitoring different metrics in apps written in QtQuick 2, ownCloud sync integration for your calendars, improved "Other vibrations" setting, and updates to many of the default apps, including Calculator, Camera, and Dialler.

When will Ubuntu Touch OTA-13 be released? Well, that we don't know for sure, as the team is currently waiting for the last green light before they start the phased update process, which takes approximately 24 hours to arrive for all supported devices. However, rest assure that we'll make sure ti announce when the OTA-13 hits the streets!

"Therefore the current ETA for release is tomorrow or Wednesday. There will be an announcement sent out here once that happens. We will, of course, do update phasing as always for this release, so the OTA will be visible to all in ~24 hours after the initial release," says Lukasz Zemczak in today's mailing list announcement.

In the meantime, you can prepare your Ubuntu Phone and Ubuntu Tablet devices for the major update by making a backup of your most precious files. In related news, it looks like the Ubuntu Touch devs are already working on the next software update, the OTA-14, which could land just in time for the winter holidays with more goodies.