Nokia purchased Qt almost 2 years ago and since then have been working tirelessly to bring the native C++ runtime, with bits of C and Webkit mixed in, to both Symbian and Maemo platforms. In a world less cruel than the one today, Nokia would write an application in Qt and it would run on both a Symbian and Maemo powered device with no porting required. In the perfect world however, everyone would implement Qt since it is licensed under the LGPL, and any application written in Qt would run on any Qt enabled device. Google is betting on the web and every application being built in HTML, while Nokia is betting on Qt. Who do you think will win?
Arguments about the future dominant mobile platform aside, what’s new in Qt 4.6? Support for Maemo 6, Symbian, Windows 7, Snow Leopard (Mac OS X 10.6), a new animation framework that supports effects like opacity, drop shadows, glow, and filtering, multi touch support, and several parts of Qt have been rewritten to increase performance. Check out the video below.
For more information on Qt, check out this page. When will we see these kind of snazzy effects in mobile devices made by Nokia? Symbian^3 will have Qt built in, but isn’t going to really use it, it will be Symbian^4 that shows off Qt, and that’s due in 2011-2012. Maemo 6 will obviously support Qt, but with the Maemo 5 powered Nokia N900 barely just shipping now, it’s tough to say when a Maemo 6 device will hit the market. Some say 2010, but I’m thinking it will probably be delayed until 2011.
[Via: Press Release]