News and Update
Alfred, ApLee and Marius presented.
VoLTE
In Gitlab we made some changes to Qualcomm device audio pass-through so that audio calls will work.
Work has been done to the ofono plugin and one of its dependencies, OfonoXMTK. It benefits all newer Android devices but with Mediatek devices it implements VoLTE!!! Notkit and others have been very busy with this. Vollaphone X23 in particular. A tweak in the indicators now flags when VoLTE is live. There will soon be a switch to turn VoLTE on and off. As Alfred has found, the Pixel3a cannot use VoLTE with his telecoms provider.
Fixes
Some errors in testing Clicks have been corrected. There have been some aethercast improvements, allowing wireless display monitor support. This uses Miracast compatible equipment.Lomiri has been updated to reflect the VoLTE changes. Gbinder now connects properly with the hardware of newer devices for vibration mode.
There will be an OTA-6 for Focal, to implement some changes before Noble. It is already frozen and will be out at the end of October.
Apps news
TimeCalculator by Vlad allows you to work with timeframes for work or activities. It makes things easier by working with base 60 and base 24 etc.
MOVEns is another new app. It can show your current speed and elevation by using GPS. The accuracy is not good enough for legal or scientific purposes but it is quite practical. It also displays a compass so you can see which direction you are headed in. Thank you to Wilfred for this.
LauncherModular has been updated to work on Focal. It provides an alternative UI for UT and allows you to see weather, time, calls and events on the Home screen. It gives access to apps, contacts etc and you can even set up different ‘pages’. Saveurlinux is thanked for this.
Adam Schrey has created a proof-of-concept mechanism for OpenStore payments, called open-store-payment-poc. It is incomplete and beta and is not a Ubports project but it is intended to demonstrate how we could implement a payment system if we wanted to. As a basis for payment it proposes crypto LTC.
Lucstay has updated the Argenta mobile banking app for Belgium.
Danfro has tweaked Brian’s FingerPainting app so that imported images keep their original aspect ratio.
Gelek Vanilla has been updated by Joan. This is an adventure games playing platform.
Several of the core apps have had some attention. A problem with using a password for File manager and Terminal when using Snaps has been fixed.
There is an app which allows you to count sheep but you can change that to count something else instead. Sheep Counter coolness from Joan.
Transport app by Martin is a multi-modal public transport search for the Czech and Slovak republics.
Search Light Handheld is not a flashlight but a retro game. Thanks to Joan again.
Lighthouse Control by Lennart is about controlling VR base stations.
UT Translator needs a 600MB download from Firefox and is best with language pairs which include English. It works offline, which is useful. By Leon.
Sponsors were thanked. We are truly grateful for every donation and making a donation is very easy to do. Select one of our options.
We have a much larger number of Patreons than those whose names are read out. There are around a hundred in total, but we highlight those who pay a relatively large sum each month.
Questions
The News section of our forum is the best place to post questions for the Q&A. YouTube live chat, Telegram and Matrix are other places to post a question.
If you didn't know, the Forum questions get priority.
A reminder that it is okay also to donate to specific projects within Ubports.
Noble apps in Open Store
GT asks when the OpenStore will be set up to list Noble compatible apps? That will only really happen when Noble is mature enough that we can test apps against it. We don’t want to judge apps against what may be a Noble fail. The libraries and components have to be complete. The store was updated in good time on previous occasions so we expect to see the same again.If you have the right skills and a separate phone for development you can already look at early Noble builds and help us with testing, which speeds up the process. App developers can check if their apps work okay on those builds. They can get in some tweaks early perhaps. If an app doesn’t work, test against a future Noble build. It may be fixed for you.
Q&A 150
Caedem says hooray for the 150th Q&A. They ask whether Noble builds are daily driver ready yet. As above, no they absolutely are not. Also, will Focal apps work on Noble? XML apps will most likely work without problems. Many others will point to libraries which no longer exist at the same address. They will need to be pointed at those new resources but ‘mechanically’ they should work as before. Recompiling is recommended in all cases anyway. Difficulties are likely with OpenSSL for example, where an app relies on an older version. That may be a serious block. In those situations, Snap is an answer. Overall, the jump from Focal to Noble is much more mild that from Xenial to Focal. We will have far fewer problems.Stable system
Ghazouani asked about our priority on stability, which is not ideal for them. They would prefer a more adventurous approach. As many have said before, apps which are relied on by many people are lacking in UT (obvious ones are Whatsapp, Snapchat, TikTok etc).New alternative webengine and core apps
Domubpkm commented in the forum about the alternative webengine from Alfred, which allows some web functionality which we didn’t have before. It is build on webkit rather than chromium.A lot of work goes into core apps like contacts, calendar and camera, which are actually very heavily used but nobody really thinks about them as ‘apps’. If you lack the knowledge to build apps yourself, maybe you can assist with funding direct to a developer to help you. Developers have to eat and need somewhere to live. A crowdfunding approach could be useful.
Partial file encryption
Lazarus asked about (at least partial) file encryption. These days, some for of that is really essential. If you lose your phone, random people should not be able to access your Home folder contents. If there has been progress, how far have you got? The first step was xxscript by Google, which prompted to ensure disk encryption. This was tried together with Lomiri to initiate encryption on a per user basis. In 24.04 we could use SystemD: HomeD to manage the Home directory. That would utilise kernel based actions. Alfred is the only one who has put effort into this and there is a lot on his shoulders, with not sufficient compensation. Donations
Kristoffer asked about donations and what happens to the money? It pays for push server, build servers and other infrastructure. It assists with attendance at events and in the past it has been used to pay a few core developers. There are times when talented developers don’t have a device or where they need several for testing. Money helps to get them that development hardware.
See you next time :-)