Ubuntu Touch is the privacy and freedom respecting mobile operating system by UBports.

What you should know first

There are a few issues which we expect many users to still run into.

• The viewfinder on the Nexus 5 freezes when taking pictures in succession. Similar issues have been reported on the Oneplus One and Nexus 4.
  Workaround: Pictures can still be taken while the viewfinder is frozen. Switching apps and then going back to Camera restores the viewfinder.

• On larger screens (such as the BQ M10 and Nexus 7), the browser will close after opening a selection box while in landscape mode.
  Workaround: Either move the browser to a side stage (press with three fingers and drag to the right) or hold the device in portrait mode.

• When switching between text boxes in the browser, the input type of the keyboard is not updated (for example, when going from a numbers-only text field to a URL field).
  Workaround: Dismiss the keyboard before changing text fields. This can be done by swiping the keyboard downward or tapping on the page in an area that is not a text field.

• In the browser, selection boxes open in a new window. This is expected to continue until a newer version of Mir is used, which will allow for drawing tooltips within the surface that created them.

Existing Ubuntu Touch users

Existing users of Ubuntu Touch in the stable channel (which is selected by default in the UBports Installer) will receive the OTA-8 upgrade through the Updates screen of System Settings. Devices will randomly receive the update starting today through March 10. This spread is to give us time to interrupt a bad update in the future (should that ever become necessary), not to accommodate any bandwidth restrictions.

If 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!

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.

What's next?

It is not hard to see that this release is light on large user-facing changes. As we mentioned in the "What's next?" section of the OTA-7 release announcement, we expected this to be the case if we were not able to stabilize Ubuntu Touch with Mir 1.1 and the last version of Unity8.

We had a great time at FOSDEM meeting similar projects and learning how they have solved problems similar to ours. We hope that we can use these relationships to increase all of our projects' output.

A very important part of getting Mir 1.1 and the newest Unity8 ready is user feedback. To that end, we've merged these projects into our separate edge release channel. If you'd like to test this on your spare Ubuntu Touch device, check out Living on the edge in our forum.

There is another huge effort approaching in non-Android mobile handsets. Several vendors have announced new mobile devices that do not require an Android userspace or old Linux kernels to run. These remove the complexity of libhybris and the Android container we must use to enable Ubuntu Touch on most mobile handsets today. However, the system was designed around the Android compatibility and we expect to spend considerable effort to bring up these new platforms in the coming months.

How can I help with the creation of Ubuntu Touch?

Ubuntu Touch is a community project driven mainly by volunteers. You and all others in the community will benefit from your contribution. Everyone is able to do something to help!

Development

To get help and support when getting started with Ubuntu Touch development, you can join our Matrix room '#ut_bootcamp:matrix.org'. Developers gather there specifically to help newcomers get started with our development workflows. It is a friendly space, with the motto "There is no such thing as a stupid question!".
We mark issues which probably have simple fixes with a good first issue tag.