64-bit images now available for Sony Xperia X & OnePlus 3(T)

Nov 6, 2019 14:46 GMT  ·  By

The UBports community has announced today that its Ubuntu Touch mobile operating system for Ubuntu Phones is now finally available to download as 64-bit ARM images.

After announcing last week an updated Ubuntu Touch Installer that adds support for the OnePlus 3, OnePlus 3T, and Sony Xperia X Android smartphones as Ubuntu Phones, UBports has released today 64-bit ARM images of Ubuntu Touch for the Sony Xperia X and OnePlus 3 and 3T phones for a faster and more optimized experience.

Until now, Ubuntu Touch was running in 32-bit mode on all supported devices, even if they had a 64-bit ARM processor, which most of them have. Devices running in 64-bit mode are capable of launching apps faster, as well as to use more CPU features. However, apps also need to be compiled for 64-bit for a full-fledged experience.

"64-bit ARM devices have been around for a while, but Ubuntu Touch has always run in 32-bit mode. More recent device bring-up efforts have shown us that having 64-bit ARM images is far more useful than previously thought, and not just for devices with greater than 4GB of RAM," said UBports.

Unity8 and Mir 1.x have arrived in Ubuntu Touch dev releases

UBports also announced recently that the long-anticipated Unity8  user interface and Mir 1.x display server have arrived in the latest development versions of Ubuntu Touch. Unity8 will become the default UI for Ubuntu Touch starting with the next major OTA update, OTA-12, which should hit the streets later this year for all supported Ubuntu Phones.

For now, if you want to give Unity8 a try on your Ubuntu Phone, you must use the devel channel, which isn't recommended if you're looking for a stable and reliable Ubuntu Touch experience. In related news, UBports released TELEports 0.6.0, Ubuntu Touch's native Telegram client, which adds many improvements to the content sharing system, a contact list, and a button to jump to the most recent message in a chat.