Available now for all supported Ubuntu Phone/Table devices

Dec 7, 2016 11:00 GMT  ·  By

A few moments ago, we were informed by Canonical's Lukasz Zemczak about the general availability of the long-anticipated Ubuntu Touch OTA-14 software update for Ubuntu Phone and Ubuntu Tablet devices.

Ubuntu Touch OTA-14 has been in development for the past two and a half months, but it focuses on fixing bugs rather than on adding new features. Probably the most exciting thing implemented in the OTA-14 update is a revamped Unity 8 design that sports a brand-new task manager with support for fuzzy backgrounds and app icons.

"This time not so many changes released in overall but with the goal of introducing less regressions. Also, the commit log for this release isn't too verbose due to multiple different cherry-picking we had todo during the release. Possibly the best way to know what changed is looking at the Launchpad milestone," said Lukasz Zemczak.

Oxide 1.17 and Opus audio codec support have landed

Also new in the Ubuntu Touch OTA-14 update is version 1.17 of the Chromium-based Oxide web engine library, as well as Opus audio codec support, which was implemented in the qt-multimedia package. Among the improvements, we can mention that SMS notifications should now be displayed when the device is locked.

Other than that, the device should no longer appear off during an image update, some alarm issues have been fixed, and it looks like vibrations will work again when other vibrations are enabled. There are various other small fixes, and for more details we recommend studying the full changelog on the Launchpad page of the OTA-14 milestone.

Meanwhile, you can check your Ubuntu Phone or Tablet device to see if the Ubuntu Touch OTA-14 is available, as it has been released as a phased update, which means that it might take up to 24 hours to land in all regions. If you do not see the update, check again in a few hours, but by tomorrow, December 8, everyone should have it.

Ubuntu Touch OTA-14 is currently supported on BQ Aquaris E4.5, BQ Aquaris E5, BQ Aquaris M10, BQ Aquaris M10 HD, Meizu MX4, Meizu PRO 5, Nexus 4, and Nexus 7 devices. Please note that the x86 emulator images don't work on Ubuntu 16.10 (Yakkety Yak) hosts. Check out the release notes for more details!