Ubuntu Touch OTA-19 Release
Ubuntu Touch is the privacy and freedom-respecting mobile operating system by UBports. Today we are happy to announce the release of Ubuntu Touch OTA-19, our neighteenth stable update to the system! OTA-19 will become available for the following supported Ubuntu Touch devices over the next week:

BQ E4.5 Ubuntu Edition
BQ E5 HD Ubuntu Edition
BQ M10 (F)HD Ubuntu Edition
BQ U Plus
Cosmo Communicator
F(x)tec Pro1
Fairphone 2
Fiarphone 3
Google Pixel 2XL
Google Pixel 3a
Huawei Nexus 6P
LG Nexus 4
LG Nexus 5
Meizu MX4 Ubuntu Edition
Meizu Pro 5 Ubuntu Edition
Nexus 7 2013 (Wi-Fi and LTE models)
OnePlus 2
OnePlus 3 and 3T
Oneplus 5 and 5T
OnePlus 6 and 6T
OnePlus One
Samsung Galaxy Note 4 (910F, 910P, 910T)
Samsung Galaxy S3 Neo+ (GT-I9301I)
Sony Xperia X
Sony Xperia X Compact
Sony Xperia X Performance
Sony Xperia XZ
Sony Xperia Z4 Tablet (LTE or Wi-fi only)
Vollaphone
Vollaphone X
Xiaomi Mi A2
Xiaomi Mi A3
Xiaomi Mi MIX 3
Xiaomi Poco F1
Xiaomi Redmi 3s/3x/3sp (land)
Xiaomi Redmi 4X
Xiaomi Redmi 7
Xiaomi Redmi Note 7
Xiaomi Redmi Note 7 Pro

The Pine64 PinePhone and PineTab are updated independently of the rest of these devices. The stable channel for the PinePhone and PineTab will not receive an update labeled "OTA-19".

What's new?

This release of Ubuntu Touch is still based on Ubuntu 16.04.
 
On the App framework side we had some minor improvements landed: 16.04.7 framework has been added. And the packages qml-module-qtwebview and libqt5webview5-dev have been added as well, allowing developers to wrap QtWebEngine. This was requested for application compatibility with other platforms that do not offer direct access to QtWebEngine.

Halium 7.1 and 5.1 devices have now access to gyroscope and magnetic field sensors. Also a rough implementation of a compass is available though its currently still very erratic. Improvements for this calculated sensors are welcome!

Note that Halium 9 and 10 devices use sensorfw instead of our legacy platform-api and therefore have already support for at least the gyroscope. For some reasons though magnetic field sensor is currently not correctly exposed. We will try to address this soon.

In the messaging app the keyboard will no longer pop up automatically, allowing a more focused way of reading incoming messages when one does not want to reply immediately.

Bugs and issues fixed 

As we went for the messaging app´s auto-popup of the keyboard we also fixed a few other annoyances around the messaging app and it´s keyboard handling, which would in fact prevent popping up the keyboard when it was needed. Seems the messaging app was not too eager about writing messages :)

The WiFi negotiation should now prevent unnecessary password dialogs if the connection cannot be established immediately. This reduces the annoying pop-up and also creation of multiple entries labeled (1) (2) etc for the same SSID.

Let´s talk about audio bugs and media hub: First we fixed a situation that prevented to put music on pause when the headphone cable has been removed and rather continued playback through the device´s main speaker, quite annoying.

Then we fixed a bug in media-hub which put the device to sleep after the first piece of music was played, resulting in a very choppy and broken playback of all music pieces thereafter. Also the display went dark when playing remote media that contained video information only, since media-hub did believe its audio only.

Finally we fixed the most critical media-hub bug so far: Preventing the device from sleep when 2 pieces of audio were played in rapid succession, probably also when interleaved with music and system sounds, or whatever combination of triggers there could be. Media-hub would not clear all requested wake locks properly, resulting of a device that consumed the battery very quickly. Sorry for that one!

Camera and screen shot could not play the intended sound effect. We found out that this effect was indeed coming from inside the Android container and replaced it with a better sound that resembles more the sound of a real camera. We hope you like it!

Pixel 3a got some important fixes: Shut down does not hang the device anymore, resulting in full discharge of the battery, and also the proximity sensor is working now correctly during calls. Also video recording had troubles with capturing sound correctly in some situations, resulting in a frozen camera app. That could also fix other devices with the same problem.

How to get OTA-19

Existing Ubuntu Touch users

Existing users of Ubuntu Touch on Stable channel (which is selected by default in the UBports Installer) will receive the OTA-19 upgrade by using the Updates screen of System Settings. Devices will randomly be allocated the update from today through. This spread is to give us a breathing space to stop the rollout of any bad update (should that ever become necessary), and is not to accommodate any bandwidth restrictions.

If however you would like to receive the update immediately, turn on ADB access and issue the following command over `adb shell`:
sudo system-image-cli -v -p 0 --progress dots
Your device should then download the update and install it. This process may take a while, depending on your download speed.

New Ubuntu Touch users

You will find instructions for installing Ubuntu Touch on your device at devices.ubuntu-touch.io.

"I found an issue!"

Have you found a bug? We want to know! Quickly!

You can follow our Bug Reporting document to learn how to present the information we'll need to confirm and fix your issue. Every bit helps. The best way to improve Ubuntu Touch is to use it and then tell us about the experience.

You should always check to see whether your bug has already been reported on ubports/ubuntu-touch on Github. Browsing open bugs is worth doing, even if you have nothing to report. This ensures that you can watch for any of the open issues and help fix them by providing more information.

Ubuntu Touch Q&A 108
Wireguard VPN, Focal developement, OTA-19 RC, Miracast support