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Nokia Releases Qt SDK For Mobile Development
An anonymous reader writes "Nokia has released its unified Qt-based SDK for cross-platform development for Symbian and MeeGo (plus Maemo) devices. The blurb reads: 'Today sees the release of the Nokia Qt SDK, a single easy-to-use software development kit (SDK) for Symbian and Meego application development. Developers can now develop, test, and deploy native applications for Nokia smartphones and mobile computers. The beta version of the SDK is available for download from today, ready for developers to kick off development for new devices, including the just-announced Nokia N8.'"
(hey, can it be anything but sarcasm if Symbian has half od smartphone market? Even if it's just a minority of what Nokia sells...)
One that hath name thou can not otter
No, but it could be what Nokia needs to transition Symbian developers to Maemo/Meego instead of losing them all to Android.
When done right, crossplatform is always good, even if you've got no use for one of the platforms.
Oh god... I am totally not shocked to see that the bio on your homepage lists your occupation as philosopher. If you were a software developer I would have been quite confused by your statements...
Ogre Wedding Planners llc.
As a Qt developer and an n900 owner, Nokia's efforts to extend the Qt platform to portable devices is extremely exciting.
Don't forget that Qt has been an inspiring cross-platform toolkit for years and is the framework behind KDE.
Along with some great improvements to publish to phone support in Qt-Creator (Qt's LGPL IDE), we are getting expansions to the api which include: bearer management, contacts, location, messaging, multimedia, and sensors, among others.
For more info:
http://labs.trolltech.com/blogs/2010/04/27/nokia-qt-sdk-what-is-in-and-what-is-not-and%E2%80%A6-what-is-it/
http://qt.nokia.com/products/appdev/add-on-products/catalog/4/new-qt-apis/mobility
http://peach.rlsl.org/files/2008/07/america-sees-world.jpg
Laugh! It's funny! Not sad, or terrifying at all. (They have nuclear weapons you know)
Deleted
You will probably want PySide since it gives all Qt functions to Python and was written with mobile devices in mind. It is not "done" yet but there is just enough for you to get your hands dirty with.
Even more sad, Symbian will be the standard OS on _all_ Nokia low end to mid end phones. I speak about 100M devices/year and rising.
Well, companies and developers who takes Symbian market serious and watching the World outside Gizmodo/Engadget land enjoys millions of downloads and a huge money, recently it was uncovered that largest share of ad supported apps comes from Symbian handsets.
Now with Qt unified release, it means first time, both Symbian and Linux (extend it to Android, easy) UI code, the most hard and demanding one these days can be unified. It isn't some Sun Java promise either, I use KDE 4 apps/parts in OS X, compiled from exact same code.
The most unfortunate news (!) is, Symbian gigantic market share even rises even without the massive S40 to S60 transition.
Actually Nokia, by using Qt is the only one which doesn't reinvent the wheel.
Application made with Qt will work on Windows, Linux, Mac, BSD, Symbian, Megoo etc..
Nokia, even if their smartphone are not perfect are really doing some nice stuff and are the one which are not playing alone like Apple, Google or RIM.
If Google is serious about Go language, they can release its SDK for Symbian as soon as tomorrow and I bet its runtime will even be "featured" on Nokia's "Ovi" (App) store.
We aren't speaking about Apple here, everything is open and free. Nokia currently features "Locago", a J2ME competitor to their own, multi billion maps application.
For example, MS already released an alpha (or beta) of Silverlight for S60 along with SDK. Adobe Flash 10 is next to come.
If you don't like that language, just use another language that compiles to it (or a subset of it). Most languages can be compiled to C.
Nothing should even prevent you from compiling to machine code in most cases.
Now you're just trying to be cool and trendy. You should have mentioned Erlang to get extra cool points.
You can write perfectly secure, fast and lightweight programs in C++. Actually, you can code however you want in C++, since it's basically a meta-language: feel free to reinvent a language within the language; not that the standard dialect -- which, ironically enough, is little used -- is any bad though.
Qt plus Nokia's commitment to open source plus Nokia's affinity for Python I think will make it the overall winner, despite being behind in the smartphone development race. Building apps using Qt+Pyside should be far nicer and allow for a very modern programming approach with fewer mobile-specific development skills necessary given that Python+Qt are a very common combination for desktop apps as well.
Also, Nokia is the only company that seems to be doing the open source mobile platform right. Android is only half open source, and realistically, it's only open to OEMs. Garage developers are about as welcome in Google's ecosystem as herpes.
I hate printers.
I would love to be able to build Symbian apps in Google's Go, it is an ideal language for secure, fast, lightweight programs for mobile apps.
Why is go so much better? As far as I can tell it is no lighter than C++ (it has garbage collection which implies some non-trivial runtime) and it lacks parameterized types. It does have multi-programming (as does C++0x, and the variants of C++ and C on many common compilers via openmp), and fast compiles.
But, I don't see any particular advantage.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
I have a E/1 too and I will just ask one question. First of all, you know E71 has upgrade, E72 with basically twice the processing power and free RAM with extras like compass... It is basically iPhone 3GS compared to 3G. So, our devices are previous generation.
Did you even try Qt demos, very early alpha ones from qt.nokia.com blogs? Or, did you use your devices unique advantages like absurdly long battery life, multi tasking, free navigation, open platform?
Yes, any company these days can invent cold fusion and nobody will be impressed and the will line up for iPad instead but it doesn't change how huge change this represents in mobile space and even open source.
panic/recover is not "better" than exceptions. It only really allows to trace and log serious errors -- most likely programming or system errors --, to provide debug data, with no automated cleanup and operation cancellation being done.
An exception-based programming style however, allows to enforce invariants, model atomic constructs, and guarantee deterministic resource management.
I do believe there's a go compiler already for the N900 - at least I recall seeing it in the repos.
That's because you're late on the bandwagon. Symbian has been around for a very long time, and there are plenty of people who know how to develop for it - all of those will be interested in this. Furthermore, given how popular Qt already is for desktop development, that's a very large crowd that can use their existing skills directly.
That, and also Qt is much more sane than either Android or iPhone APIs. And, of course, C++ - a language that'll let you not only shoot yourself in the foot (like C), but also rape yourself with a chainsaw - but also a language which is so much more powerful than everything else out there...
The upcoming release will be Qt 4.7 + QtMobility 1.0.0 + QtCreator 2.0
QtMobility is the API for accessing all the bits found on phones but sometimes on desktops. QtMobility has been released, just the other day. You can get it and run it against Qt 4.6
-Messaging (mail/SMS)
-Sensors
-Multimedia
-Services
-Bearer Management (Network management when connected via Cell & WIFI)
Qt 4.7 just went Beta status and should be expected soon.
This release bring in QML, which has been called "Declarative UI". This is the sexy Flash competitor with CSS-style interfaces, animations, and JavaScripting. That's all it adds.
Qt Creator 2.0 I believe is in Beta and will be released with Qt 4.7 as well.
This is the (optional) IDE. But its really good in its own right for Qt development. It features ability to cross-compile and remote debug. You can compile and have it load the app onto your phone and debug that way. It also has QML viewer and WYSIWYG GUI development (Integrated QtDesigner)
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
A witty quote proves nothing. There is not a single argument in that list. Without exception, every C++ detractor that I have personally met dislikes C++ for a misture of reasons including FUD from the internet, fundamentally misunderstanding basic features and in some cases outdated knowledge from maybe 2002.
With the exception of the vexing parse, I suspect that fixing any things you think are broken in C++ would make it slower and/or less expressive.
So, what do you think is broken and how would you fix it.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
We're already working on it: http://www.notmart.org/index.php/Software/KDE_on_MeeGo
We had been working previously with both Maemo and Moblin, so this in a way simplifies things a bit for us. It's early days yet, but we're making great progress. The more the merrier, so feel free to join us (you can find us in #plasma on irc.freenode.net)
A witty quote proves nothing.
No, but a misplaced one can cause compile errors...
"Mindshare" == "What I think is the best platform, inside my head".
That's a fscking big "just".
I dunno. I do kinda agree with the various quotes about error messages that can only be called "Lovecraftian"
I wish Nokia provided some better alternatives to C++ for development on Symbian.
That is exactly what they just did! The way Qt extends C++ gives you a fast and powerful development environment, surpassing plain C++ big time.