UBports Foundation is that the community that adopted both Unity 8 and Ubuntu Touch projects ditched by its creator Canonical. Since then, they’ve continued to bring privacy, freedom, and Ubuntu experience on mobile devices.

Now, with the newest release of Ubuntu Touch OTA-12, they need to reach a milestone of their most massive release ever. This Over-The-Air-12 software update comes with an inventory of the latest features and changes for several Ubuntu Touch supported mobile devices. Let’s dive in to ascertain what’s new with the Ubuntu Touch OTA-12 major release.

Ubuntu Touch OTA-12: All New Features

1. Lomiri — Renamed And Refined Unity8 Desktop

Months ago, UBports announced the new name ‘Lomiri’ for Unity8 desktop environment to avoid a reputation clash with popular Unity game engine. Alongside the new name, Lomiri now also features a redesigned

Even for developers, the remake of Unity8 provides an in-depth self-test to avoid new bugs and report the old ones.

2. Switch To Editing Overlay

Among the keyboard improvements, Ubuntu Touch OTA-12 makes switching to an editing overlay easy for all layouts. You’ll now swipe up from rock bottom to modify from keyboard to editing overlay. Also, within the editing overlay, you’ll double-tap the blank area to form the transition between selection and cursor mode.

3. Bug Fixes and Improvements

OTA-12 has also resolved several reported bugs to reinforce the user experience. As an example, typing a colon not capitalizes on subsequent letters, and personal browsing on the Morph browser now only deletes private browsing sessions rather than all browsing sessions.

Even the opening of dropdown boxes doesn’t crash the default Ubuntu Touch browser, Morph. Last but not least, many indicators that make and cargo translation files get a fix to render text more in selected language instead of English.

4. Mobile Specific Enhancements

If your device features a multi-color LED, Ubuntu Touch will use it to display the charge status in several colors. The yellow color will indicate a coffee battery, solid white for charging, and reliable green means battery is charged fully.

Furthermore, if you employ FairPhone 2, Nexus 5, or OnePlus One, you don’t get to flash a special kernel to run android apps on Ubuntu Touch using Anbox. This is often because OTA-12 includes all required kernel drivers in these devices’ default kernels.

And here’s an enormous relief for people using FairPhone 2. Ubuntu Touch OTA-12 now switches SIM automatically to 4G on FairPhone 2. You currently don’t get to manually shift one slot to 2G to use 4G in another slot SIM.

5. Other Updates In Ubuntu Touch OTA-12

OTA-12 now uses its own Google OAUTH keys to enable Google Contacts and Calendar to sync. However, you’ll face problems while signing in as Google blocks suspicious browsers. You’ll look out for the difficulty details faced by others also here.

Speaking of Ubuntu Touch applications, they get more contrast to differentiate background and text that now looks better and pleasing. Lastly, for better integration between OS components, Ubuntu Touch OTA-12 updates the Mir display server version from 0.24 to 1.2.

This newer version of Mir features support for Wayland clients on Ubuntu Touch’s mainline devices that already use Wayland, like PinePhone and Raspberry Pi. Unfortunately, this feature isn’t currently available for Ubuntu Touch supported Android-based devices.

How To Download And Install Ubuntu Touch OTA-12?

If you’ve already installed and are using Ubuntu Touch, you’ll get the Ubuntu Touch OTA-12 update through the updates screen in system settings.

But if you’re new Ubuntu Touch and need a fresh installation, first inspect the Ubuntu Touch support for your device from here. Next, if your mobile device is listed;if your mobile device is listed, you can follow the installation instructions from the same page.