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Valentine's day. Show your love (for) Ubuntu Touch!

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                Hello community!

                Welcome to a special Valentine's edition of the UBports Foundation email newsletter, February 10th, 2022

                Valentine's day is just around the corner

                I know the feeling. You're struggling with what to buy your love for this years Valentine's day, right? And it's not like you can go home empty handed, right?

                As a one time special we have got just the thing for you! You know we are a foundation and not some commercial store, but we thought it would be fun to do a Valentine's special this year! Yep, the whole works, so including some discount.

                So if you go to our webshop, you will see that our beloved and very cuddle pluche Yumi is on sale!  Go order your present here: https://ubports.com/shop/product/3037000103-ubports-yumi-plush-55 . (For a few days available with a discount)

                And, if you like to show us your love in another way, that's possible too!

                Show your love for UBports/UT/Yumi/Lomiri.

                • Consider testing the upcoming OTA-22 (more on that below)

                • Review your installed apps and consider making a donation or a nice review.

                • Write an article on your UBports blog/blog or something nice on your social media about UBports/UT/Lomiri or an app.

                • Make a video and share it on a platform.

                • Go to the UBports shop or donation page.

                • Put a nice picture of Yumi/UBports/Ubuntu Touch on your profile on Telegram, Mastodon, Matrix...

                • Share this email and if you can translate it into your language.

                • Stick a Yumi/Ubports/Ubuntu Touch sticker on your laptop, car...

                Consider starting to contribute to UBports on a non-sporadic basis:

                • With app, documentation and system translations.

                • Helping on the forum, Telegram, Matrix...

                • Creating or improving documentation.

                • Porting a device.

                • Sorting Gitlab issues.

                • Contributing code to applications or the system.

                • Creating an application.

                • Submitting bug reports.

                • Contributing design ideas in the system or on your web pages.

                • Volunteering if you are a sysadmin, designer or anything else that might be useful.

                • Consider giving a talk about UBports/UT.

                • Buying hardware with UT pre-installed.

                • With system or application testing.

                • Consider making a monthly donation to UBports or to an application/UT developer.

                Surely there are more ways to show our love for UBports/UT/Yumi/Lomiri, such as adding a new and improved version to this text.

                Well, and since you are reading this any way and I am currently writing this anyway, I thought to throw in 2 extra small pieces of news.

                I (still) need a little help!

                Thanks so much! Many of you nice people have responded to my recent feedback request about the concepts for an upcoming campaign.

                If you have not voted yet, please have a look and give us your vote.

                Below you will see 4 marketing concepts. Please look at them and vote for the one you feel best about. You can send in your vote here!

                Concept 1


                In this concept we work with a main character. Preferably, it uses a telephone. His or her expression clarifies the message that is conveyed by means of text bars.
                01. 'Imagine a phone that...' the main character thinks.
                02. 'Helps you share what you want,' the main character looks as if he can't believe it.
                03. 'But doesn't overdo it.' the main character goes crazy! Wow, this is what I'm looking for!
                04. The phone appears with the name UBPort Foundation.
                05. The orange area from shot 04 moves up and in the middle the sentences pass by one by one:
                - Our community of volunteers and companies
                - has been building the phone of your imagination
                - Now, we need your help...

                Concept 2


                Each of these expressions shows a sentence. The image can be used seperately, but also as a total in a video animation. The photo in each image changes with a fade to an image that relates to the quote. At the end is a CTA with a join us message: we need your help. The shapes in the pictures also move subtly like a dynamic shape.

                Concept 3


                In this concept we work with different “metaphor” images. Preferably, with a telephone. His or her expression clarifies the message conveyed by means of text bars.
                01. 'Imagine a phone that...' we see a phone in the picture and "zip zoom" on the screen.
                02. 'Helps you share what you want,' we see the zoomed-in image that represents an experience that you want to share (e.g. via socials) but also literally sharing the picture image.
                03. 'But doesn't overdo it.' we see an image of a situation that you would rather not share with the world. This picture also radiates overdo.
                04. The phone appears with the name UBPort Foundation.
                05. The orange area from shot 04 moves up and in the middle and sentences pass by one by one:
                - Our community of volunteers and companies
                - has been building the phone of your imagination
                - Now, we need your help...

                Concept 4



                In this concept we work with different “funny” images. Think of images that are taken way out of context. A telephone but an old one and the 'overdo' depicted by a person entangled in telephones and cables. Images are connected through use of color, so that it does feel like an expression.

                01. 'Imagine a phone that...' we see an old-fashioned telephone in the picture, the use of color gives it a modern look.

                02. 'Helps you share what you want,' we see a group of people "sharing" via their beloved phone.

                03. 'But doesn't overdo it.' we see an image of a situation that literally radiates 'overdo'. Too many phones, wanting to share too much.

                04. The phone appears with the name UBPort Foundation.

                05. The orange area from shot 04 moves up and in the middle the sentences pass by one by one:

                - Our community of volunteers and companies
                - has been building the phone of your imagination
                - Now, we need your help...

                <End of concepts>, </concepts>, end of concepts. Well I guess you get it by now. Please vote! You can send in your vote here!


                OTA-22 coming up

                I'm happy to announce that it is time to ask for your help in testing Ubuntu Touch OTA-22! This is slated for release on Friday, February 18th, 2022. Before then, we need to make sure it's ready to go!

                What's new?

                As explained in our last few release milestone posts, we're entering a period where change to Ubuntu Touch will slow down for a while. This shift in priorities is allowing us to get Ubuntu Touch based on Ubuntu 20.04 built and on par with the stability of Ubuntu Touch based on Ubuntu 16.04. Even so, there are some great improvements in this release!

                •    Volla Phone X is the first device to utilize a Halium 10 image (NotKit)
                •    Pixel 3a got a lot of updates for audio quality: Call volume can be controlled now in a sane way, even on loudspeaker, and less issues with echo cancellation (fredldotme)
                •    “Interactive drawer blur” on devices that support it (Watch the drawer background change when its moved over different apps) (fredldotme)
                •    WebGL support on devices that support it (Blacklisted are BQ e4.5, E5, Meizu MX4, Nexus 4) (dobey)
                •    Persian keyboard is now available (dobey)
                •    Greeter rotation (Login screen does follow orientation) (capsia)
                •    Dialer: Auto-suggest contact names based on phone number, App demo reenabled (lduboef)
                •    Camera permissions enforced on Halium 9 devices that support it (fredldotme)
                •    Preparations for FM Radio (to be continued) (mardy)
                •    Filter out some invalid touch events on bogus panels (Flohack74)
                •    Fingerprint can be used on Oneplus 5T now (Flohack74)
                •    Camera is usable in Morph Browser (nice videocalls incoming) (fredldotme)
                •    Fixed a bug with the shader cache (dobey)
                •    Preparations for the new contacts backend (mardy)

                And a few minor bugs and common issues have been fixed, too.
                 
                By the way, if you'd like to help us out with Ubuntu Touch based on Ubuntu 20.04, you can learn more on the GitLab Epic we created for the project. This epic lists milestones and tasks that need to be completed for the project to be finished. We're developing a tool called the UBports Platform Development Kit, an integrated vm-in-a-box with handy developer tools that make it a cinch to work on our 20.04 images. It works on many Linux distributions and Intel and ARM64 MacOS. We're also working on Windows support. We'd appreciate you trying it out and giving us a hand with documenting it and developing with it.

                How can I test?

                We want to ensure that every release we ship is better than the previous one, so we're looking to our entire community to help us with the QA (Quality Assurance) of OTA-22.
                  
                We've prepared a „GitHub Project for OTA-22 QA“ (link to https://github.com/orgs/ubports/projects/32) which lists the issues we'd like your feedback on. The QA column lists issues which do not have complete test results. The Done column lists issues which, thanks to our efforts here, are confirmed as fixed. The In Progress column lists issues which are either not fixed or where the fix has a severe negative side effect. The goal at the end of this is to have every issue in the Done column.
                  
                We're interested in hearing your feedback on everything in the QA column. We want to know:
                  
                * Which device are you using?
                 
                * Does the issue appear fixed in your testing?
                 
                * Did you notice any side effects of the change as it is listed in the issue or Pull Request?
                  
                Testing any issue should be easy. On your device:
                 
                1. Update all of your apps using "System Settings -> Updates" or "My Apps" in the OpenStore app
                 
                2. Head to System Settings -> Updates -> Update Settings -> Release Channel
                 
                3. Select `rc`
                 
                4. Go back to the Updates screen to install the downloaded update
                 
                After your phone reboots, you'll be on the OTA-22 release candidate! Of course, **only** step 4 is required if you are already on the `rc` channel and this update will come through as usual.
                 
                The image which loads will be named `(2022-W06)` or newer. You can find your image version in System Settings -> About -> OS.
                 
                Now you can pick any issue in the QA column in „the OTA-22 project“ (link to https://github.com/orgs/ubports/projects/32), and ensure that you are not able to reproduce it. If you can't reproduce the issue, the fix worked! If you can reproduce the issue (or you notice something else that isn't right), we want to know about that too. Leave a comment with your device and image version, then let us know the results of your test.
                 
                We also have an „OTA-22 Call for Testing forum post“ (link to https://forums.ubports.com/topic/7419/ota-22-call-for-testing-companion-post) where we can discuss any questions you may have about anything that comes up during your testing.




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                Merry christmas to all and to all a good night