News and Update
AppLee presented.
Noble is nearby
There has been a lot of activity on Gitlab, not aimed at shiny. New features but with maintenance, bug-fixing and progress. Overall, the amount of progress seems to indicate that Noble is near and that the finishing touches are being applied.
Summer Apps short overview
NoStrut is a UT client for Nostr social media. Lennart has added Dutch and German translations to it.Teleports our Telegram client has been update. It fixed a protocol update that would have prevented logging in with a new device, without creating a new account. Thank you to the team.
LionelD has an update to Battery Saver, which manages cellular and WiFi connections to minimise energy use. With the latest release you can prefer the second SIM and you can implement an auto-switch which still works if the phone is transported while the screen is locked. Thank you Lothar for the lock trick.
Brian Douglass maintains the app store (thank you Brian!) He also gives us Fish Tank, which is now updated in line with its dependencies.
Andrej has provided us with a new app called uPiano. It is a short piano based on Simple Piano by Maximilian Lika, with some added twists.
Time Tracker has had another update. Matthias has fixed some issues when saving sessions and the German and French translations have been improved.
Iquit is an app to assist people with giving up smoking. Mick has done quite a lot of tidying up of the code and graphics. It still does the same but it is more elegant and polished now.
Kiwix is an offline mini internet app. There you can view Wikipedia, Stack Exchange, Project Gutenberg etc. The team has brought in a lot of changes to security and UI and improved the whole experience.
Jozef has made another tweak to his amateur radio app QTHLocator.
Matthias has created a new app called Account Book which will help you to keep track of your personal finances. It combines incomes and expenditures and allows you to set a budget. If you already have something similar, you can export your data to CSV, which can then be imported into this app. Exporting your data is also possible.
A very simple app has been built by Gwado, as an exercise in building an app. It allows users to access the Radio Nova stream (which is French). It is offered as is and without any plan to do more work on it.
Sponsors were thanked. We are truly grateful for every donation and making a donation is very easy to do. Select one of our options.
There are some new Patreons on our list of supporters who have not yet been added to the ticker feed but we promise to do that shortly.
Sponsorship of particular tasks is also possible, so it might be in support of a particular device or a particular developer. Please ask if you are interested in something like that.
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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.
FP 2 and Focal upgrade
Jezek asked a question previously (in Q&A 143) but it got lost. It was about an issue which has come up many times before. For many users, a particular attraction of UT is that it is an operating system that can keep older devices going with a fresh and updated system. Many see the environmental advantages of extending the life of phones. Jezek had in mind FP2 and Focal.For long periods we helped to deliver that (Nexus 5 was the classic example of old phones getting a new life. It was still supported when the real life hardware was beginning to break.) It has always been accidental though. It was never a primary aim. The move from Xenial to Focal was hard but we did it because we wanted to support recent, high-powered phones. Our priority is functional phones for ordinary users.
If Werner (?) is a working on FP2 that is fine but it really would be a major task and it would not be a priority for any of the core team.
Webkit based browser
Eric H asked whether it will be possible to use the WebKit based browser that Alfred is working on to creat webapps? In principle, that could happen but building that functionality around the browser is not a priority at the moment. Making the browser itself fluid and reliable is the first objective. The project is a very important one and Alfred is working on it alone at the moment. More developers helping out and funds directed at Alfred so that he can continue would both assist greatly. Caller ID
In the chat, ConSpy asked whether there will some day be a toggle for caller ID or a customisable lockscreen menu for camera access etc? AppLee has a memory of caller ID working on Xenial so presumably that is something which can be restored. The lockscreen could be customised as described but that would need some work on the system.OTA 5 and Noble
Alagirisamy asked about the OTA-5 release date and the timescale for Noble. We don’t have a programmed release schedule. We simply release things when they are ready. OTA-5 is about to go out for testing and will be released shortly afterwards if there are no major problems. No promises on Noble but it is nearing a release date, hopefully before September.Noble development evolution
Uxes asked how Noble is going? As the news at the top shows, there is always something new every two weeks, which is satisfactory progress. It is a big project with a lot of tasks. Our approach is to keep it easy to use for normal users so that is bound to take longer than a package for advanced tech geeks. We expect to finish in a reasonable time-frame but meanwhile we have Focal which works just fine. FOD
RK asked whether there has been any progress towards under display fingerprint sensor/FOD. That would be device specific and depend on the driver. If you go to the Devices page devices.ubuntu-touch.io you can look up a particular device and see what is supported. Fingerprint sensor is a function on the list. First check whether the device is maintained. If it is not, you will not see any absent features implemented. If there is a maintainer, they will be able to give you some information about that feature on their device.
See you next time :-)