14 DAY TRIAL // It looks like the Ubuntu Touch developers at Canonical are not wasting any time, and they've just published the official release notes for the soon-to-be-released OTA-9 software update for all supported Ubuntu Phone devices.
Prominent new features in Ubuntu Touch OTA-9 include support for custom ringtones, huge Bluetooth improvements thanks to the new Bluez5 component, sound notifications for low-battery state, support for downloading arbitrary file types in the Web Browser app, as well as lots of convergence changes to the Ubuntu UI Toolkit.
Additionally, most of the default Ubuntu Scopes have been refreshed, and there's now support for mpris playlists in the Media Hub, along with media consumption (audio) in Scopes. Under the hood, the OTA-9 update is now based on the new Ubuntu 15.04.3 framework.
Besides the cool new features mentioned above, Ubuntu Touch OTA-9 comes with several bugfixes for some of the most annoying issues. Among these, we can mention a fix for the Camera app to provide proper resolution support, location-service improvements, and fixes for many UI hangs, thus boosting the overall performance.
Supported devices
As reported earlier, Canonical will send the new OTA update to all supported Ubuntu Phone devices starting January 27, 2016, via the phased update process, which means that Ubuntu Phone users will not receive it at the same time, but in a 24-hour period.
Supported devices for the OTA-9 update include BQ Aquaris E4.5 Ubuntu Edition (krillin), BQ Aquaris E5 Ubuntu Edition (vegetahd), Meizu MX4 Ubuntu Edition (arale), Nexus 4 (mako), and Nexus 7 (flo). Until January 29, all Ubuntu Phones users should have already gotten the OTA-9 update.
After the OTA-9 update, all Ubuntu Phone users will receive a hotfix to patches a few issues that could not be fixed in OTA-9. It will be called OTA-9.5 and will arrive on February 10. At the moment of writing this article, the next major OTA update, OTA-10, is currently scheduled for March 3, 2016.