UBports continues its work of uploading the base of the mobile and touch version of Ubuntu to that of Focal Fossa. For a long time, practically since its inception, it used the base of 16.04 Xenial Xerus, but in March 2023 they took the leap to 20.04 and started using a base that is still supported by Canonical. Now, official support ends in less than a year, but let's not get ahead of ourselves. What is part of the present is Free Touch OTA-6 Focal, or simply OTA-6 if we want to omit the suffix.
Ubuntu Touch OTA-6 is a small launch, one of maintenance as they label it in the notes from this releaseAs for its name or version number, we can leave it at OTA-6, but since Xenial Xerus releases also used OTA-numbers, it can be confusing. UBports refers to these versions in one way or another depending on where you read it, such as Ubuntu Touch 20.04 OTA-6. In any case, it is the sixth release based on Focal.
What's included in Ubuntu Touch OTA-6 Focal
The new features of Ubuntu Touch 20.04 OTA-6 contain only a small number of changes, as They continue to focus on the reversal from 16.04 to 20.04. Among them, support for new generations of Android HAL — Hardware Abstraction Layer — has been added. This is intended to improve Ubuntu Touch support for newer devices such as the Fairphone 5 and the upcoming Volla Phone Quintus; however, this does not imply full support for those devices yet.
Additionally, Wireless Display stability has been improved on some devices, bug fixes have been fixed, and security patches have been introduced.
Regarding calls via LTE — VolLTE —, a last-minute regression has been discovered and they have decided to go back with the support of this type of calls on the Volla Phone X23 and Volla Phone 22 that use the port of Halium 12.
Existing users will receive the update gradually.