From your editor

Hi people, how very nice to see you alla gain! Here's yet another edition of the bi-weekly UBports news letter. Again with nice bits of news news and some sweet stuff.

This time a short edition simply because of high workload on another project. And next time seems to be equally bussy. But I promise I will make it up to you as soon as possible. Just not..., well..., today. Or next edition for that matter. But after that. I promise!

Anyway, sit back, grab hold of your favorite beverage (me currently filled to the brim with half a liter (is that a quarter of a gallon?) of Club Maté and an additional 300 CC of Sherry Coke Zero (I know, I am starting to feel like a chemical infested land fill) and listening to Equinoxe Infinity, from Jean Michel Jarre) and enjoy another episode of the UBports Newsletter.

In our community

On the GitLab page https://gitlab.com/ubports/development/project-management/-/blob/master/dev-sync-notes/20220906development-sync.txt you can read the notes of the last "Devsync" meeting. In there you will also find a link to a YouTube video that Ratchanan made titled: "Live coding, Experimental, UT 20.04: get Fairphone 4 "GSI" port to Focal's overlay store system". link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1u_H-Kv6TY4.

20.04 !!!!!!!

It seems that some people have been working really hard on getting UT on Ubuntu 20.04 (aka Focal Fossa)!! This is of course amazing news! It seems that at least the following devices can boot 20.04.

Xiaomi Poco M3 (citrus)
OnePlus 6 (enchilada)
Xiaomi Mi A2 (jasmine_sprout)
Xiaomi Redmi Note 7 (lavender)
Google Pixel 3a (sargo)
Volla Phone (yggdrasil)
Volla Phone X (yggdrasilx)
Sony Xperia X (suzu) (Llooks to be only non-Android 9+ device?)

As nice as this is, they are not yet completely there yet, but getting there! So, be carefull if you want to try this out. If you have one of these devices as an extra laying around, why not join in on the development effort?

Wait, there's more!

Our beloved development environment Clickable now also supports 20.04!

And if you want to learn to develop apps, we now have an online training that you can find at https://ubports.gitlab.io/marketing/education/ub-clickable-1/ , and even a book you can order it directly from lulu.com.

Training support

Speaking of training, a news training season is on its way! You can read all about it at https://ubports.com/blog/ubports-news-1/post/ubports-training-update-6-aka-0110-a-new-season-is-on-its-way-3862. And the whole training team has the following important message for you fine people:

Our_Mission_For_The_Next_Season {

This season we want to gather as much people as possible and get them to program their first Ubuntu Touch application. For this reason we like to get in touch with anybody interested in following the training.

We are aware that Module 1 (Getting your development environment up and running) can be difficult to finish. That's why we want to get in touch with people struggling with setting up their development environment.

Email: digitaleservice@gmail.com or koen@ubports.com (soon we will use training-support@ubports.com, just not yet..)
Website: https://0111.nl/trainingut
Contact: Felix van Loenen
Feel free to contact us any time.

Besides that, we provide:
-> A written training.
-> Public app development sessions.
-> Personalised contact at any moment you wish.

}

So, if you have problems getting started with the application development training, you can get individual support. And if you like to join a training team because that is more fun, head over to https://0111.nl/trainingut and get started.

Apps in the spotlight

Here are some Ubuntu Touch apps to try out:

Sapot Browser (https://open-store.io/app/sapot-browser.kugiigi) by Kugi Eusebio is a fork of Morph Browser with experimental changes and features that may or may never come to Morph. The latest 1.5 release has a lot of new features, changes and bug fixes. For instance, the list of recently closed tabs and windows is now saved and restored.
Ubuntu Info (https://open-store.io/app/system-info.walking-octopus) by walking-octopus shows system information about Ubuntu Touch, your device, the network and your battery. You'll quickly find the system information you're looking for, and otherwise open an issue in the app's GitHub repository to get the feature added.

Please remember that OpenStore has a built-in option to donate to app creators. We urge you to use that button, so that we'll get more great apps on Ubuntu Touch.

Ubuntu Touch Q&A 120

Florian, Marius and Alfred were the hosts of the Ubuntu Touch Q&A 120 session. They talked about the Fairphone 4, progress with 20.04 and VoLTE support.

The big news from the Q&A session was that the Fairphone 4 will not only get Ubuntu Touch, but that our operating system will be officially supported by Fairphone for that device. The phone has 5G connectivity, works with an eSIM, has two great cameras and a USB display port. The screen has a notch and very round corners, so we'll have a bit of user interface work to do. When the build is at a 'retail ready' standard, it will go into the official Fairphone store as a pre-installed option.

Progress with the 20.04 build has been substantial. Soon there will be a Core Development Release. This won't have OpenStore or another graphical mechanism for installing apps, so it won't be ready for users to play with, but developers will be able to evaluate the 20.04 release if they have a supported device. If you want to try it out, look under Options in the UBports Installer, enable hidden channels and find the 20.04 channel.

Marius has been playing around with VoLTE, and he was able to make and receive calls and send and receive SMS messages. The fixes so far are very specific to the device, only supporting Qualcomm modems. We'll also have to address Mediatek modems. These are used by the Volla phones, which combined now number more than the Nexus 5 in our device statistics.

You can watch the whole session and read our notes here: https://ubports.com/blog/ubports-news-1/post/ubuntu-touch-q-a-120-3863