Game in the Brain

Welcome back, Ubuntu Touch enthusiasts! The UBports team recently held their 188th Q&A session, featuring Mario, Alfred, and Atley. Despite a development freeze for the upcoming update, the team has been incredibly busy under the hood.

From massive leaps forward with the Ubuntu 26.04 base to highly anticipated Bluetooth improvements and fresh apps, there is a lot to cover. Here is a complete summary of all the discussion points to keep you in the loop.

🤝 Community Call to Action & Elections

The UBports community thrives on volunteer power, and they currently need some help:

• Social Media Maintainer Needed: The team is looking for a volunteer to help manage the UBports social media pages (Mastodon, Twitter/X, Reddit, LinkedIn). If you have some spare time to help spread the word, reach out to them on Telegram!
• Upcoming Elections: The Membership Committee is preparing elections for the Board of Directors and the Membership Committee. Official UBports Foundation members can nominate themselves until May 17th.

⚙️ Upcoming OTA Updates & Under-the-Hood Fixes

A new update is right around the corner! Coming in the next couple of weeks, this will be a point release (1.2) focused mostly on the Noble base, with a larger 1.3 update planned for later. A few patches will also be backported to Focal.

Notable Merge Requests and Developer Updates:

• Lomiri UI Toolkit: Now has namespaces in C++ enabled.
• Lomiri Polkit Agent Backported: This is a fantastic quality-of-life update. It allows for “sudo-less” installation of snaps and other privileged operations by simply prompting for your PIN or password.
• Package Syncing: Several packages (like the Lomiri download manager, notifications, and media scanner) have been synced between Debian Salsa and the UBports GitLab.
• Bug Fixes: A media scanner crash caused by symlinks to directories lacking permissions has been fixed. BlueZ auto-start behaviors and NFC plugins also received upstream releases.
• Qt 6.9 Progress: The bootstrapping of Qt 6.9 for the 24.04 base is completely finished! However, Qt WebEngine is still requiring a bit of work to play nicely.

🚀 The Cutting Edge: 26.04, Bluetooth, and Location

Atley brought some incredibly exciting news from his recent experimental builds:

• Ubuntu 26.04 is Booting: Atley successfully got a fully working Ubuntu 26.04 image up and running! Because roughly 90% of the packages were already synced from Debian to Ubuntu without major system changes, the upgrade path has been surprisingly smooth. Expect a testable image in the near future.
• A Better Bluetooth Experience: A massive overhaul is coming to Bluetooth reliability and user interface.
  • UI Redesign: The Bluetooth settings page has been redesigned to align with modern mobile standards. It now separates your paired devices from the active scanning page.
  • Privacy Boost: Your phone will no longer immediately broadcast itself as discoverable the moment you open the Bluetooth settings. It will only do so when you actively seek to pair a new device.
  • Reliability: Background daemon (BlueZ) updates have massively improved auto-connection reliability (especially tested in car audio systems).
• Network Location & A-GPS: Big strides have been made in device positioning. The team has implemented a “Network Location” system using BeaconDB, which triangulates your location using cellular towers and Wi-Fi networks—perfect for getting a fix indoors (like at an airport). Furthermore, A-GPS (Assisted GPS) is now working. This downloads satellite positioning data over your cellular network rather than waiting for a slow direct-satellite connection, drastically speeding up time-to-first-fix.

📱 App Store Spotlight

The OpenStore has been bustling with new creations and updates from the community.

New Arrivals:

• TfL Status: Live line statuses and reports for Transport for London.
• Draw on Document: A handy tool for quickly annotating pictures or PDFs on the go.
• Offline Translator: A locally-hosted translation database so you can translate text without an internet connection.
• Aria for MSI: A new browser dedicated to the Fediverse.

Updated Favorites: Dozens of apps received updates, including Launcher Modular (for desktop-like background widgets), Signal Beta, Morph Browser, UBikes (Barcelona cycling app), Screen Recorder, Ratatouker (Bluetooth file transfer), Format (image converter), Sealed (Bitwarden client), and the trusty uNav GPS app.

📅 Events and Sponsors

• Welcome OSI: Open Source Initiative (OSI) has officially joined as a sponsor!
• Lomiri Codefest: Taking place on May 16th-17th in the Netherlands, this hackathon/code festival is a great place for developers to gather, discuss code, and build apps for Ubuntu Touch.
• Open Source in Education: OSI is doing great work promoting open-source software courses in universities (currently focusing on India), helping bridge the gap for companies struggling to hire developers with open-source backgrounds.

🗣️ Community Q&A Highlights

• Can UT support external DJ controllers? Using something like a Fairphone 5 with a dock is technically possible. Audio playback via PulseAudio already works, but recognizing specific media/MIDI control devices is still an ongoing work in progress.
• Thoughts on AI in Porting/Development? The team agreed that AI is a fantastic tool for guidance, narrowing down errors, and pointing you in the right direction. However, blind copy-pasting is heavily discouraged. Developers must fully understand the code they are pushing to maintain the integrity of the project.
• What’s the status of eSIM? Both Atley and Muhammad have made progress on eSIM support. While it isn’t fully finished yet, it’s creeping closer to the top of the priority list.
• Any hurdles with the 26.04 base? So far, no major show-stoppers! There were a few minor issues requiring systemd downgrades, but development has been incredibly smooth.
• Wayland Permission Dialogues fixed! Alfred announced a massive breakthrough: Permission dialogues now properly overlay on top of Wayland and Mir client applications. This seamlessly integrates the trust store and knocks out one of the final major blockers for the transition to Mir 2!

Want to support the project? You can donate at ubports.com/donate or grab some cool gear at ubports.com/shop to help keep Ubuntu Touch alive and thriving!