OTA-4 update for Ubuntu Touch comes at the end of May

May 19, 2015 03:43 GMT  ·  By

In an email sent to the Ubuntu Touch mailinglist on May 18, Łukasz Zemczak from Canonical's Foundations Team announced some more details regarding the next major update of the Ubuntu for phones mobile operating system.

We reported at the beginning of May 2015, during the Ubuntu Online Summit (UOS) event that took place on the UbuntuOnAir channel between May 5 and 7, that the Ubuntu Touch developers were planning a major update to the Ubuntu Touch operating system this summer.

Well, the good news that we want to give you today is that the said Ubuntu Touch major update is around the corner and will be published sometime at the end of the month, most probably in the middle of next week. The stable update is dubbed OTA-4 and will officially change its base to the Ubuntu 15.04 (Vivid Vervet) release.

"Everyone's slowly preparing for the OTA planned at the end of the month," says Łukasz Zemczak. "The list of issues that have been scheduled for this milestone can be found on the ww22-2015 LP milestone. There are some connectivity fixes on the way, but not only that - good stuff in overall. With the release of OTA-4 the stable branch will officially become vivid based."

Notable new features are coming to Ubuntu Touch

Besides being based on Ubuntu 15.04, the Ubuntu Touch OTA-4 stable update will include significant new features that promise to make Canonical's mobile operating system more reliable and usable to users of the BQ Aquaris E4.5 Ubuntu Edition and Meizu MX4 Ubuntu Edition smartphones.

Among some of the highlights of OTA-4 for Ubuntu Touch, we can mention support for .M3U playlists, playback controls are now integrated in the sound indicator, playlists are now visible in the sound indicator, USB Tethering support, NFC support, support for playing videos under the lockscreen, and better Bluetooth support.

Moreover, the new update will bring hotspot support, a Private browsing mode, proper 3G data setup, bookmark folders, support for adding Web Apps to the Home screen, copy and paste support across fields, new keyboard layouts, as well as better app startup performance.