OTA-4 release candidate is now available for public testing

Jun 19, 2018 19:11 GMT  ·  By

The UBports project through lead developer Marius Gripsgard informs Softpedia today on the immediate availability of the first Release Candidate of the upcoming Ubuntu Touch OTA-4 update for Ubuntu Phones.

The latest Ubuntu Touch update from UBports, OTA-3, was released last year near the Christmas holidays, but it was still based on Ubuntu 15.04 (Vivid Vervet), so if you though Ubuntu Phones are dead, think again, because the UBports team has been hard at work to bring you the OTA-4, which will be the first to rebase the operating system on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus).

"The main reason why the arrival of OTA-4 seemed to take so long is because Ubuntu Touch switched its base to Ubuntu 16.04 LTS Xenial Xerus. This is a mammoth milestone for the project, because it allowed us to transition from the unsupported Ubuntu 15.04 Vivid Vervet to a Long Term Support (LTS) base," reads today's announcement.

What's new in Ubuntu Touch OTA-4

Apart from being rebuild from the ground up based on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus), the upcoming Ubuntu Touch OTA-4 software update not only runs twice as fast as previous versions on any Ubuntu Phone, but it also adds some exciting new features like a more simplified Phone app and support for installing Ubuntu Touch on the GSM version of the Nexus 7 2013 tablet.

Other than that, Ubuntu Touch OTA-4 promises to add various other improvements, such as the implementation of QA scripts, the ability to only display release channels in System Settings if there's more than one available, no longer rotate photos and video captured with the new Fairphone 2 front camera by 180 degrees, and make the keyboard opacity consistent when set at about 80 percent.

Furthermore, Ubuntu Touch OTA-4 will enable audio volume control during phone calls and will no longer ignore system image updates when there's an app update available. Best of all, Ubuntu Touch OTA-4 will be released for all Ubuntu Phone devices that run the OTA-3 software update released last year. To install the Ubuntu Touch OTA-4 Release Candidate, use the UBports Installer.