Merry Christmas from UBports
We have some very special news! Ubuntu Touch 20.04 Focal Fossa now has a beta Release Candidate update channel. To give it a try, just use the UBports Installer… or if you’re already using 20.04 Devel, change channels as normal.
#UBports #UbuntuTouch #OpenSource #Ubuntu
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Ubuntu Touch OTA-1 Focal Release
Ubuntu Touch is the privacy and freedom-respecting mobile operating system by UBports. Today we are extremely happy to announce the release of Ubuntu Touch OTA-1 Focal, the very latest update to the system! OTA-1 is will be available on the following supported Ubuntu Touch devices:
Fairphone 4
Google Pixel 3a
Vollaphone 22
Vollaphone X
Vollaphone
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’ For now, the new version supports a smaller list of devices than before: just the Fairphone 4, Google Pixel 3A, and three models of Vollaphone.’
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Are there any news on when the fairphone 4 with preinstalled ubuntu touch will be available? I would realy like to see this on the market and buy one of them.
Hi and welcome to the user community! 
Preinstalled alternatives are usually provided by the respective project, so I guess https://ubports.com/ would be your best point of contact.
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Thank you for your answer. I found this blog meantioning the fairphone 4 with Ubuntu Touch:
It is nearly half a year old.
From my understanding the plan is, that fairphone will offer the FP4 with pre-installed Ubuntu Touch. If so than I thought that someone here at fairphone would know something about the time scedule.
Can anyoune tell me if fairphone is even planing to sell FP4s with pre-installed Ubuntu Touch? Or is the plan that UBports will sell these devies?
The video is more than 1h long, do you have a timestamp for us where you say that information is?
Only judging from experience here: Fairphones with other OSes preinstalled (/e/ and iode to my knowledge) always come from the other organizations, not from the Fairphone shop.
Edit: there is of course a section on preinstalled UT in the transscript but I wonder if they said more than was written down.
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not long ago tried ubuntu touch on the fp4
did not do well for me
too much things not working well
with this in mind
will they bring the FP5
with a googlefree system?
or do we have to make it a real fair phone once more by installing other than the obvious?
I was not referring to the video, i was referring to the text below:
Fairphone 4 with preinstalled Ubuntu Touch
There was a question about Fairphone and when we can expect FP4 with UT pre-installed? They of course have quality criteria for their phone software and we will have to get through their tests. We will need to have it in a good state for sure. There would have been no sense in testing it with 16.04 so we have been waiting for a few final tweaks to the 20.04 build, before launching into tests. A partner company actually does the testing and it will be very interesting to see their assessment.One of the tests is of the emergency call system. Not something that we can do!
I would realy like to see a phone company offering phones with different OSes. Sometimes I feel like a lot of people don’t even know that there is more than iOS and Android.
Maybe you haven’t picked on how difficult it is to have, and support, one OS on these Fairphones. Even big companies with billions don’t have in house multiple OSes
So unlikely to happen.
e/OS make the software and put it on a phone
I doubt Ubports will do that
I was also very interested in FP4+Touch. Then I understood 4G was not supported due to proprietary issues. I choose e/OS as best alternative. Are we now discussing a 4G / 5 G capable Touch?
3 days ago, someone in the “Ubuntu Touch on Fairphone 4”-Telegram-Chennel asked a question about the “preloaded fairphone 4”:
Taihsiang (tai271828):
Is Ubuntu Touch preloaded fairphone 4 available on the market, or still a plan available on the market in the end of this year?maybe I am late to the party. on the UBports booth last year in FOSDEM, the staffs told me there might be a chance that there will be a preloaded fairphone4 on the market that I can buy. I am so looking forward to it! However, I did not manage to get the info of progress with quick googling and check-in the UBports website. may anyone update me or tell me where to follow the latest news in the right way?
[…]
Answer from Florian Leeber:
We have to wait until 20.04 is stabilised enough so that Fairphone would accept it
They are quality-gating the port and a few things are still off
Based on the answer I am pretty sure that the plan is that fairphone offers the phone with UT.
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I think 5G seems not to be working right now (Fairphone 4 Ubuntu Touch | UBports Forum). But I dont know about 4G.
That is not how I would read it.
Fairphone may give the thumbs up in saying the OS is a reasonable alternative but not that they will sell phones with Ubuntu pre-installed.
I imagine another ‘business’ would buy the Fairphone , install Ubuntu and sell, as the e foundation has done…
Then this ‘other business’ will handle all the support etc.
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So, I bought the FP4 with a via to installing Mobian, but Mobian currently does not boot (at least, not from internal storage - I’ve not tried from an SD card, but that might be next on the list).
After casting about for a while, I’ve come to Ubuntu Touch.
It’s imperfect, but it’s Linux, and so it gets me out of the Android ecosystem - no more messing about with APKs and root and so on; I’m on Linux, so I can start developing Linux-based solutions to my functionality requirements, which I can easily bring over to Mobian, once it’s up.
I’ve installed, and I’ve been setting it up for some hours now, and so…
- You have root.
- There’s an app store. It’s pretty minimal, but there’s at least one of everything I needed, except off-line translate (I think - it looks on-line only, but I’ve not fully checked).
- The root FS is read-only; I tried to install Signal Linux desktop version, and I can’t write to /usr/share/keyrings. Not sure where I’m going to go with this - if I have to hack about as root to overcome this, or if it means I’m actually stuck with apps only, and that would be a profound loss of functionality. I’m looking to get access to the full Linux repo.
- The UI is certainly reasonable. Different obviously to Android 4.4 (my current phone) but I’m getting on with it okay.
- Preferences are a tad on the minimal side, but it seems okay.
- There’s an off-line maps server app, and a couple of map apps, which I’m now experimenting with. I’m still not quite sure I have off-line maps actually working properly (as opposed to using cached tiles from when wifi was on) but I am confident it is possible.
For modifying the FS you can sudo mount -o remount,rw / if I remember well…
Otherwise for installing desktop apps you can use the Libertine container
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Today we are very excited to announce the release of Ubuntu Touch OTA-2 Focal. This second stable release based on Ubuntu 20.04 brings improvements and three new devices, full details can be found in the OTA-2 blog.
#UBports #UbuntuTouch #OTA2 #MobileLinux ubuntu #Focal
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Ah, Libertine! I had no idea what it was for - this could be useful. Thankyou.
(Jesus - this forum - reply on each post, but it replies without a quote.)
OTA2 → thankyou for the post - I will try it out; I doubt it will really change things, the core issue is the paucity of apps. However, it might get rid of the occasional app freezing, which would be welcome.