14 DAY TRIAL // On September 7, Canonical's John McAleely sent an email to the Ubuntu Touch mailing list, informing all developers and users about his idea of building a 64-bit image of the Ubuntu for phones operating system.
According to Mr. McAleely, Canonical's Ubuntu Touch mobile operating system needs to use the drivers from 64-bit versions of the Android OS. As you might know, the Android platform is now 64-bit capable, and more and more devices ship with this version.
Therefore, John McAleely proposes the usage of 64-bit Android BSPs (Board Support Packages) within Ubuntu Touch, either by building a 64-bit (ARM64) image or by using 64-bit Android in such a way that it will be restricted to only the container on which it is hosted, while the rest of the Ubuntu Touch image remains untouched.
"We have a choice, I think. We can either attempt to build a 64bit Ubuntu image for phones (broadly, an arm64 version of what we have, for example), or attempt to use the 64bit Android in a way that is restricted to only the container which hosts it," says John McAleely.
On the other hand, the Ubuntu Touch developer explains on the Ubuntu Touch's Wiki why it may be advantageous to keep the 32-bit builds of the mobile operating system and boot them on a multi-arch enabled 64-bit Linux kernel, which must support both 32-bit and 64-bit libraries.