14 DAY TRIAL // Ubuntu Touch has just received a new major update and the developers have made some serious changes to the operating system, which now feels a lot faster and the experience is a lot smoother.
It's been quite a while since the previous stable update for Ubuntu Touch, and the developers have had some problems with a number of bugs that kept them from releasing an improved version. After they started focusing on the fixes and less on the new features, a new image has been promoted and it's the best one released until now.
The previous update had many issues, at least on the Nexus 4. Unity crashed all the time, some of the applications froze, and the handset couldn’t even restart. These problems seem to be gone now and a number of new features have been implemented as well.
"Image #203 promoted! As we have announced earlier we are no longer in TRAINCON-0, so landing velocity should be a bit faster now. Yay! Image #203 seems to be really solid on mako devices, so most people upgrading should be happy with what they see. But it must be noted that we have a few blockers on start which we mostly decided to whitelist for the time of this promotion. These need to be handled with top priority."
"Our overall goal is having 2 promotions per week and a green image in smoketesting - remember! Also, as per another announcement, from now on all landers can officially land features to the RTM distro which our RTM-targeted images will be built from," says Ubuntu developer Łukasz Zemczak in his regular email address.
According to the changelog, audio recording has been implemented in the camera-app, a number of on-screen keyboard enhancements for text prediction have been implemented, the Mir display server has been updated to version 0.6.1, and it's now possible to save and restore the browsing session in the Bowser app.
Also, the new swipe-from-bottom scope view has been implemented, numerous Unity 8 changes and improvements have been added, tone generator support has been added in the Dialer app, several indicator changes have been added as well, and a huge number of other enhancements, improvements, and bug fixes are also present in this build.
If you want to test Ubuntu for phones you will need a Nexus 4 or a Nexus 10 device. The installation is quite simple and details are available on the official wiki.
Ubuntu developers are working right now to produce an RTM version for their operating system, and the autumn launch of the Bq and Meizu phones seems to be on track.
