Comments, Code and Qt. Some words about the wonderful world of software engineering

9Jan/1143

A developer’s experience with Qt 4.7 for Symbian^3 and Nokia N8

Nokia is really pushing Qt to be the cutting edge framework of choice for developing on Nokia devices. I really want to try to develop for Symbian (since it still is the dominant smartphone operating system out there) but I have no background in Symbian development. But I do have a fair amount of experience with Qt and since Qt is a cross platform environment, it shouldn't be a problem for me as a Qt developer to work with Symbian too, I thought. This is what Nokia is also saying to us and it makes perfect sense. Qt works very nicely across Linux, OS X and Windows including deployment and debugging.

I wanted to try Qt 4.7 on my Nokia N8 device so I headed over to Forum Nokia to grab the developer version of Qt 4.7 for Symbian^3. The first thing you notice is that the page already expects some previous Symbian development experience. Whilst many people might be confident in their ability to find Mobile Phones with which they can use Qt, or even in operating similar SDKs, it seems unlikely that a large number of people would have significant experience with Symbian specifically. "The following files will need to be installed:" and a bunch of .sis files. Ok. How? An educated guess is to copy the files over to the phone when it is in mass storage mode and install them on the phone. I'll get back to this in a moment. But just imagine if this would be the way for Apple to distribute beta framework components to their 3rd party developers. I would like the SDK to handle this for me. For example some add-on that I can install for the SDK and it will do the rest for me after I connect the phone. It would, of course, also update the SDK itself.

"The Nokia Qt SDK does not support Qt 4.7 at the moment". What? Ok, great... So there is a developer tool available, but I cannot use it if I want to use the latest version of the Qt platform to do some Qt Quick application for example. And let me say that Qt 4.7 was launched in the summer of 2010. I would imagine Nokia SDK team would have had plenty of time by now to integrate a critical update of their development platform to the SDK.

I can probably still develop with Qt 4.7 for Nokia N8, after I manage to install it on to the device. But when I create my cool Qt Quick application, I am not able to sell it or distribute it through OVI Store since Qt 4.7 is not officially supported on Symbian yet. So here are already two things that makes me as an application developer to look elsewhere; the tools don't support the latest version of Nokia's own development framework and there is no way for me as a developer to deploy or monetize my application through the OVI Store.

Why is the life of a Nokia developer so hard?

Which bring me back to my attempt to install Qt 4.7 on my Nokia N8. I copied the Qt 4.7 packages, that I downloaded from Forum Nokia, on to the device. Then I opened the file manager, opened the directory where I copied them to and tapped on the first .sis file to install. "This is a developer version of Qt 4.7 and could harm your device if you continue to use it". Hmm, ok, I can live with that. I just want to get started. "Accept".

"This package is not compatible with your device".

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  • http://bigbrovar.aoizora.org/ bigbrovar

    It is said that Large ships are difficult ( and takes time) to turn. With stories like this I get a feeling that Nokia has not even made any attempt to start turning their titanic around.

  • http://bigbrovar.aoizora.org/ bigbrovar

    It is said that Large ships are difficult ( and takes time) to turn. With stories like this I get a feeling that Nokia has not even made any attempt to start turning their titanic around.

  • http://blogs.forum.nokia.com/blog/lucian-tomutas-forum-nokia-blog Lucian

    Valid point, you should expect an SDK to take care of installing and configuring Qt 4.7 with IDE and device support, all in a one click install experience. Kind of what the Nokia Qt SDK offers for Qt 4.6.3 for Symbian.

    Except that this release of Qt 4.7 for Symbian^3 was clearly not supposed to be it, was it? We’re not talking of a alpha release of the Nokia Qt SDK there, not even a technology preview of it. We’re not talking even of a full Qt SDK release (as released through qt.nokia.com) but rather of a patch for one of those. For in fact Qt 4.7 for Symbian was released at qt.nokia.com but without device binaries for Symbian^3. The package you’re talking about provides only those binaries, for you to be able to use Qt 4.7 on Symbian^3 devices as well.

    So yes, you were expected to know Symbian and to have a Symbian SDK installed already, also the Qt 4.7 SDK from qt.nokia.com. Generally speaking you were expected to be an experienced [Symbian] developer able to test and give pertinent feedback on the quality of the Qt 4.7 implementation on S^3. For those developers Forum Nokia considered to be interested by that package all these things you mention here are not relevant. You clearly had the wrong expectations.

    The official production grade offering for application developers targeting Nokia’s mobile devices is the Nokia Qt SDK 1.0.2 which offers Qt 4.6.3 for Symbian based devices and which can be used to target all devices starting with S60 3rd Edition FP1, including Symbian^3 devices. There is no such Qt 4.7 based offering for Symbian devices.

    • http://twitter.com/jan_ekholm Jan Ekholm

      Do I read here “nor will there be an official 4.7 for Symbian”? That would mean that there really is no platform currently offered where 4.7 is supported? Well, except desktops. That said, 4.7 and QML really is an exciting combination from a wannabe games developers point of view. A shame that the best market for such apps seems to currently be Apples brand new Mac App Store (not iOS).

      • http://blogs.forum.nokia.com/blog/lucian-tomutas-forum-nokia-blog Lucian

        All I said was that there is no offering now. Of course there will be a Qt 4.7.x release for Symbian, an SDK will be released soon. And Qt 4.7.0 is already supported (through the Nokia Qt SDK) for Maemo/N900, so you can already not only develop but also distribute Qt Quick apps, and by doing so be ready for whenever Symbian offering is opened.

        • http://twitter.com/jan_ekholm Jan Ekholm

          Last I checked you could not upload N900 apps to the Ovi store. I actually tried to do just that, but it was impossible only a few months ago. We all want to be filthy rich selling the next Angry Nerds and we need new Qt:s and suitable channels to reach an audience for that.

        • http://www.johanpaul.com/blog/ Johan Paul

          Not being able to test your application on the target device impedes any software developer. To assume that my Qt Quick application will work on N8 only because it works on N900 is quite naive. Just recently my friend told me that WebKit is broken in Qt 4.7 for N8, so I would anyway need to wait for N8 before I can make assumptions.

        • http://blogs.forum.nokia.com/blog/lucian-tomutas-forum-nokia-blog Lucian

          I am not naive, that’s why I suggested that you will be ready (in terms of having knowledge and experience) and not that your application will be ready for deployment (although that may as well be possible).

        • http://twitter.com/buchanmilne Buchan Milne

          “Just recently my friend told me that WebKit is broken in Qt 4.7 for N8″. Maybe that is one of the reasons why Nokia isn’t providing Qt 4.7 for Symbian yet. The fact that Qt 4.7 is available for some platforms doesn’t mean it is ready for others (e.g. ones which don’t have sensors, GPS receivers, etc.)

        • Anonymous

          @Lucian Would it be possible to provide early bird versions of NokiaQtSDK for 3rd party developers so that they could provide feedback for Nokia and also start to port their applications to the latest versions? I think, this could help Nokia a lot, instead of that developers getting frustrated when waiting the official releases.

          I also know that it’s possible to run app on desktop, but as a developer I think the most important work is done on device especially when it comes to tuning the performance and other optimizations.

          As you probably know Qt 4.7 developer package is like 3 months old and when checking Qt Bug Tracker I can see that many bugs have been fixed, but I haven’t seen updates in developer packages at Forum Nokia.

        • http://blogs.forum.nokia.com/blog/lucian-tomutas-forum-nokia-blog Lucian

          Hi dpointer. The SDK releases go through [alpha,] beta and RC stages before the final release. Also, their components, such as Qt 4.7.x, or Qt Creator, are already available as well as separate components so you can already play with them (with some extra effort). I would say that there is already good time for feedback, I’m not sure if more is needed.

          You are right about the package being old by now, I will see if a newer build is available and if releasing it still makes sense before the next SDK release.

    • http://twitter.com/hfarold1 Harold Barrero

      hey I am new in this, i was lookin for an update of qt, I am not a developer, i am an usser, and now, after reading all you people said, ia am not sure about it, please can you tell me: sholud i update my qt or should i have to wait? i own a nokia n8 and i cant  use some apps because they use qt 4.7  
      thanks for your help guys

      • http://www.johanpaul.com/blog/ Johan Paul

        As a user you should not need to update Qt on your own. Qt updates to devices are part of the software updates that are being pushed over the air. You should use the latest software version on your phone, so for Symbian users that would mean Qt 4.7.2. If some app doesn’t work with that version of Qt, it’s better to contact the app developer (although it should work if it worked in a previous version of Qt)

  • http://www.johanpaul.com/blog/ Johan Paul

    I feel that Nokia is talking the talk, but not walking the walk. I think Nokia knows the problems but for whatever reasons they have very difficult to implement what they should do – and probably what they plan for. I mean – Nokia is not stupid. I bet they follow competition very closely.

    But with experiences like this, I can only think how long will it still take for Nokia to get on par with the competition. I have tested both Android SDK and XCode for iOS and they are from a different planet what comes to developer offering (tools, documentation, web pages…) and easy of use for the developers.

    Qt is arguably a great thing and a framework that can save Nokia. With Trolltech, Nokia got a bunch of very talented software engineers (on top of the ones they already had) so it cannot be an engineering issue. So I wonder where the issues could be…? Not enough effort in SDK and developer offerings? Not enough end to end thinking?

    • http://blogs.forum.nokia.com/blog/lucian-tomutas-forum-nokia-blog Lucian

      If you want to compare Nokia’s offering with those from Apple or Google & Co. then compare the official SDK releases. How do you see the Nokia Qt SDK 1.0.2 compared to Android SDK and iOS SDK (not XCode)?

      • http://twitter.com/jan_ekholm Jan Ekholm

        Lucian: with iOS you download XCode and you’re fit to go. Just plug in our device to your machine, wait for XCode to detect it and then select the device as your target. Click “Build and run” and see the application get installed on your device and start. This is how it’s supposed to work. That said, the API:s offered by Apple are another matter and I much prefer Qt here.

        But once the application is done the process to get it to the iTunes Store is just so streamlined and slick. Yes, it’s not perfect, but it’s doable by anyone. Nokia has so dropped the ball here (did it ever have a ball?).

        • http://blogs.forum.nokia.com/blog/lucian-tomutas-forum-nokia-blog Lucian

          Jan, Nokia Qt SDK offers exactly the same experience: Install SDK -> start Qt Creator -> open example project -> connect phone -> hit Run -> play with the app on device. I would be really interested to know where there is a gap if there is indeed one. I don’t plan to buy a Mac just to try the iOS SDK so I don’t have recent hand’s on experience. To which I will make the point that Nokia Qt SDK works at least in part also on Linux and Mac.

          I have no experience with the publishing process on iOS, but I have seen no stories about applications being rejected by Ovi for mysterious or downright stupid reasons (duplicate functionality). The certification process might be more complicated but that’s something that has improved a lot and Nokia even covers the costs for certification.

          I’m not making a claim that Nokia has the state of the art offering that all the others should follow. Nokia welcomes the feedback and engages with developers, big and small, to find ways to improve the offering, be it in tools or processes. But let’s compare apples with apples and discuss about real issues.

        • http://twitter.com/jan_ekholm Jan Ekholm

          Did you conveniently ignore all the issues Johan brought up? For him the process definitely was not as you describe. Undoubtedly there are scenarios where the process you describe would work, but what scenarios are those? Qt 4.6 is not interesting in any way now that mobile UI:s can be made much nicer with QML. With iOS I can install any new SDK, even betas (if available to me) and just build my app.

          As for the platforms, yes, there Nokia should have the lead. But I’m hard pressed to believe that you actually can do productive work with real devices on the three major OS:es.

          As for Ovi, I heard stories first hand by some developers that have had such atrocious experiences with the Ovi store that one wonders what really is going on there… I was interested in putting an N900 app up on the store some months ago. Not possible.

        • http://blogs.forum.nokia.com/blog/lucian-tomutas-forum-nokia-blog Lucian

          I don’t think I ignored anything, although accidentally I might have. Just as you may have missed my points in the previous comments.

          What Johan talks about are real issues, however, they do not affect the official offering, i.e. the Nokia Qt SDK. They affect a component released discretely, in a wiki page, with the clear aim of enabling brave and experienced developers to hack together an environment which is not yet supported by Nokia, but which would enable them to a) experiment with a new technology and b) give feedback to Nokia about the quality of the implementation in an early enough stage.

          As for your desire to have access to the latest and greatest release, the current situation is as described earlier: Qt 4.7 is not currently supported on Symbian device. Not supported by *the* SDK. Not supported by Ovi. Not supported at all. Not yet. Sorry! And you cannot complain about the developer experience offered for something that doesn’t exist. The only valid complaint is about the release being delayed, a complaint which is understandable but not easily solvable.

        • http://twitter.com/jan_ekholm Jan Ekholm

          This is exactly the defensive talk that Johan mentioned. I assume you are at Nokia?

          Anyway, how can 4.7 not be supported? It’s not as if it appeared out of the blue sky one day, it’s been known for ages that it would arrive. Why would the SDK effort not have been started way ahead of the release? I fail to see what really is do hard here. The SDK really isn’t anything magical at all. It’s just a package with existing tools packaged into one convenient(?) package. Is there something fundamental I don’t grok here? What is so hard?

          As for QML, well, it would be somewhat silly to start new applications that did not use QML, as it’s what seems to be the way forward. It’s not there yet, but hopefully it will be soonish, and to start new applications or ports and base them on the obsoleted QWidgets would be a waste of time.

        • Dogbert

          Not supported is the wrong term here. There is nothing preventing you from using Qt4.7 as such with the old NQS (in fact, target the N900 and you WILL be using 4.7), the trouble is (and this is where the original article ties in, too) that Qt4.7 is not yet officially released for the *N8*. Of course the NQS will try to target the *stable* version for *that* device. Nokia could have chosen the easy way and simply not release Qt4.7 until each and every platform/service/firmware syncs up to it, but Nokia doesn’t have the luxury of going slow with Qt.

          And since someone mentioned Android – it’s exactly the same situation there, too. Does Android suck because, say, you want to use a feature from Froyo, but your operator/vendor has not yet pushed it to your device which has Eclair or Donut ?

        • http://blogs.forum.nokia.com/blog/lucian-tomutas-forum-nokia-blog Lucian

          If by defensive you mean pointing out that you are attacking from the the wrong angles, then yes, I am defensive. If you have points to make about Nokia’s current developer offering, make it so. But the package this post talks about is not part of it and that is the part I want to make clear to everyone, before the idea gets propagated through various other blogs. You cannot have a bad [or good] developer experience with Qt 4.7.x on Symbian^3 devices since Nokia only offers you 4.6.3 for Symbian.

          All else is subject for another discussion altogether, maybe on Forum Nokia’s forums (there is a feedback section) or on some other blog post’s comments.

        • http://twitter.com/jan_ekholm Jan Ekholm

          The point is that 4.7 *should* also be offered. I don’t know what could be so hard there. As for Forum Nokia, I firmly believe that Nokia does not listen to feedback from developers so why should I bother?

      • http://www.johanpaul.com/blog/ Johan Paul

        Ok, fair point. But I hope that this is no excuse towards us developer that it is a fact that SDK is lagging behind what comes to Qt 4.7. I still cannot create my Qt Quick app for Symbian or make money via OVI Store.

        But if you really want a feedback on the developer offering compared to Android and iOS SDK, then one word for that would be “shattered”. Forum Nokia is a mess for finding documentation. Or should I use Qt’s official pages to find out the APIs? No wait – I cannot do that since I don’t know the version of Qt that Nokia SDK ships with (it doesn’t say anywhere) and Qt Mobility is not well supported on Symbian. Forum Nokia feels like a link collection to various sites, which is not a unified experience.

        Everything should be in once place.

        So what I am really looking towards is a fully vertical developer offering from the Forum Nokia pages (or whatever your point of developer support is) so I can be in only one place to get all I need what comes to tutorials and API documentation. Right now I don’t know what the correct place for me as a developer is since there is http://doc.qt.nokia.com/ and then there is http://www.forum.nokia.com/Develop/Qt/. If Nokia SDK should be the only tool to use for all Nokia devices, then all information should be in once place.

        And then I found this: “Qt tools for Symbian C++ developers”. This is what I don’t want to find on Forum Nokia – some special tools for some special group of people. I want to use Qt for Symbian with Nokia SDK; should I care about that or not? Or am I missing something if I ignore that? Messy.

        And please please, add the version of Qt that Nokia SDK ships with.

        • http://blogs.forum.nokia.com/blog/lucian-tomutas-forum-nokia-blog Lucian

          Qt is a popular framework, with customers from many IT domains, from embedded developers to PC and Mac and now to mobile, under three licensing models. I don’t see it as strange to have a qt.nokia.com site to cater for all these developers. I look at it just the way I look at symbian.nokia.com (home to be of the Symbian OSS project) or maemo.org. Should be visited by those who plan to use Qt on non-Nokia context or those interested in developing Qt itself, or in experimenting with the latest releases.

          Nokia is also a customer of Qt, using Qt on the Symbian and Maemo/MeeGo devices. As you have noticed Nokia doesn’t necessarily use all the Qt releases in their products, just as they don’t use all Symbian releases (see Symbian^2 for example) or Maemo/MeeGo releases. Forum Nokia gives you access to Nokia’s developer offering on top of the Qt components used on Nokia devices.

          Should everything be in one place? Personally I don’t think so. But I don’t care that strongly about it either. Let it be in one place, as long as the information is clear and easy to find. For me, based on the above understanding of the role of the sites, I see no problem in finding the info I need on either of the sites. And if the documentation is provided twice (actually trice, the SDK as an offline version too) that is only a problem if the docs would have conflicting info/versions.

          You also have to remember that Nokia has a long and good experience in building a developer ecosystem. We have a lot of Mobile Java and Symbian C++ developers building a business on our devices. We have devices still active on the market which as of now do not support Qt, and very good developers which we have yet to convince to adopt Qt as their development framework of choice instead of Symbian C++. You may not want to see “Qt tools for Symbian C++ developers” or “Symbian C++ SDKs” but there are others that do.

        • http://www.johanpaul.com/blog/ Johan Paul

          “Qt is a popular framework, with customers from many IT domains, from embedded developers to PC and Mac and now to mobile, under three licensing models. I don’t see it as strange to have a qt.nokia.com site to cater for all these developers.”

          This is more how to make it easy for Nokia, not for 3rd party developers. If Forum Nokia is the place for developer resources, make it so.

          “I look at it just the way I look at symbian.nokia.com (home to be of the Symbian OSS project) or maemo.org. Should be visited by those who plan to use Qt on non-Nokia context or those interested in developing Qt itself, or in experimenting with the latest releases.”

          This is how it has been. Isn’t it time for Nokia to learn from the past and make a change for something better?

          “As you have noticed Nokia doesn’t necessarily use all the Qt releases in their products, just as they don’t use all Symbian releases (see Symbian^2 for example) or Maemo/MeeGo releases. Forum Nokia gives you access to Nokia’s developer offering on top of the Qt components used on Nokia devices.”

          This just adds to the complexity and confusion. If not even Nokia has one place to see what it uses from Qt, how could 3rd party developers have a clear picture of “the Nokia SDK and API”?

          But still, if you want to keep Forum Nokia as a collection site for resources that are linked externally, at least make the hierarchy of Forum Nokia clearer. Currently Symbian and MeeGo (and S40?) are all in one place. Just as you would say that “Qt is all you need. Here are all the docs you ever need for developing for a Nokia device”. This is great, but clearly your comments suggests this is not the case. This should be made clear at Forum Nokia too.

          “For me, based on the above understanding of the role of the sites, I see no problem in finding the info I need on either of the sites”

          If you ever tried to develop for Microsoft, you see how fractioned and confusing MSDN is. Forum Nokia is better, but has similar issues. And I don’t think Nokia can afford to do just a bit better. It needs to exceed all expectations and make the developer offering as good as it is for Android and Apple. Forum Nokia is not that today. I am sorry. Sad to see that there doesn’t seem to be even effort in trying to to improve the current situation. Or am I wrong? When we, developers, try to give critical feedback (thank you btw. for enabling direct communication channel to Nokia), we are met by excuses and self defense for some legacy stuff.

          “And if the documentation is provided twice (actually trice, the SDK as an offline version too) that is only a problem if the docs would have conflicting info/versions.”

          Of course. I am not speaking about copy-pasting content. Just making one good place for everything.

          “You also have to remember that Nokia has a long and good experience in building a developer ecosystem”

          Hmm. Long, probably, but which good experience in ecosystem building are you now speaking of? Something compared to Android or Apple I have missed? I am just trying to highlight the shortcomings in the ecosystem in these comments. If you want, you may use this feedback in your R&D, but please don’t think what you now have is equally good to Android or Apple. After all, we are trying to help by providing this feedback. We want Nokia to succeed. Really.

          “We have devices still active on the market which as of now do not support Qt, and very good developers which we have yet to convince to adopt Qt as their development framework of choice instead of Symbian C++. You may not want to see “Qt tools for Symbian C++ developers” or “Symbian C++ SDKs” but there are others that do”

          I understand that you speak in general from the whole Nokia’s point of view. But in this blog post – and in my comments – I speak on my behalf. You can think of me as a new developer for Symbian that wants to develop for it, because I believe in it, and I want to use the best of breed what Nokia can offer for the future (Qt). If you neglect my comments and speak of some legacy APIs or developer support, then you can forget about me as a developer in the Nokia ecosystem. Give me your story on how I can develop with Qt for Symbian, that is the thing I am interested in.

          I just think it’s time for Nokia to look into the future, how to secure new developers and just give a clear vision, good roadmap and great tools how we can achieve what we can do. I think Nokia knows this, but you cannot say this loud in these blog comments. But what you have said is that you want us to use only Qt – now it’s time to prove it.

        • http://twitter.com/jan_ekholm Jan Ekholm

          Nokia needs someone that shouts “developers, developers, developers” and actually does something. Currently, nobody does anything and we’re not exactly seeing any apps happen on the Nokia front. Just because there are no decent apps on the Nokia platforms actually makes it a potentially very lucrative market, but the whole sad state of all infrastructure just puts me off any such plans.

          And we all know that without 3rd party developers, whatever Nokia does it will fail. So someone needs to start sucking up to the few developers still interested in making apps for the badly fragmented Nokia ecosystem.

        • Dogbert
        • http://www.johanpaul.com/blog/ Johan Paul

          Yes, it’s very exciting to see Stephen as a software person to lead Nokia. This is what Nokia needs. I look forward to the changes he will make. My hope is reflected in the comments I’ve made in my post and in these comments.

        • http://twitter.com/jan_ekholm Jan Ekholm

          Exactly. Time to put in a higher gear and actually do something about it. Talking on a conference is one thing, actually making sure the stuff arrives on developer desktops and works is another thing.

          As for your comment about Android above: the difference between Android versions is not that big, and if you have an older version on your device you have something to work with. Here, you’re faced with using officially released stuff that will be made obsolete (QWidgets) or using the new stuff but without any chances to deploy it.

  • http://www.johanpaul.com/blog/ Johan Paul

    “There is no such Qt 4.7 based offering for Symbian devices.”

    So this only strengthens my point that Nokia’s developer offering is incomplete or flawed? Or Nokia SDK is hanging way behind the rest of technology development done in Nokia for Qt? And whatever the reason is, I still cannot make money with my Qt 4.7 application.

    And arguably, this impacts 3rd party developers. Said that, I think Nokia is interested (or should be) in getting 3rd party developers interested in Nokia’s latest technologies.

    Yes, I know Nokia SDK only supports Qt 4.6.3 but my point was that
    - I want to develop with the latest framework from Nokia (Qt 4.7)
    - I want to use Qt Quick
    - Nokia SDK does not support these.

  • Anonymous

    I agree that NQS 1.0 is horribly out of date for QML stuff. 1.1, OTOH, is pretty nice (I’m personally using the internal releases). For a fair comparison, I’d advice you to steer clear from Qt Quick development with device (use Qt Creator 2.1 on desktop instead) before you get your hands on 1.1 betas.

    Luckily, the first beta should be out soon enough and we’ll get out from this embarrassing situation.

    • http://www.johanpaul.com/blog/ Johan Paul

      Thanks Ville for your insights! This sounds promising. For the future, I hope that Nokia SDK will be in sync with Qt releases just because Qt is so central in Nokia’s developer offering.

      I guess the root issue in this whole discussion is that Nokia SDK is so out of sync from Qt. But I still hope the developer offering story as a whole would be emphasized to the developers and Forum Nokia made a hub for all Nokia device development. Now it feels to distinct from Qt and OVI Store.

  • Vulcan

    If using not-yet supported nor released beta software would be done too easy, there could be more problems?

    I have understood that there will be soon official support for 4.7 (PR1.1 update for S^3 devices might be released this week, and have Qt 4.7). I assume that then these obstacles you found will be gone, until there is next not-yet-supported version that you want to experiment and write that it is not done as easily as some other final version. Cool. With that kind of attitude your glass will always be half empty? As someone else already did, I suggest comparing apples to apples and oranges to oranges.

    • http://twitter.com/jan_ekholm Jan Ekholm

      The point is that 4.7 ought to have been out months ago.

    • http://www.johanpaul.com/blog/ Johan Paul

      Maybe I assumed that the support of Qt 4.7 would be better on Symbian, I give you that. But this lack of support and the current lack of quality also came as a surprise to me, and the critique I (and some others) have been giving to Nokia is in my opinion fair. Qt 4.7 was released last summer and it contains QML which Nokia already touts as the next best things to sliced bread and the future of mobile UI development – which I agree on of course, and which is from where my disappointment comes from. It must not have been a surprise to the Nokia SDK team or the Nokia N8 team when Qt 4.7 will be released. It’s tragic to see how all of these items are out of sync…

      What I didn’t write about, but what I have been commenting about (since Lucian asked for it) is the current state of Forum Nokia. I should write another post about that. It is too distinct from Qt and OVI Store. Forum Nokia should be the place to get all relevant information from installing and using the SDK, the APIs to publishing apps to the OVI Store. Just look at the competition. That is the thing Nokia should be aiming for with their developer site.

  • http://twitter.com/buchanmilne Buchan Milne

    It seems you didn’t read the first paragraph on the page you linked to:

    “Qt 4.7 for Symbian^3 – developer version is a development package of Qt 4.7.0 for Symbian^3 devices. It’s meant explicitly for development purposes only and cannot be used for software intended for deployment to Symbian^3 devices by end users. It’s expected that end user deployment of Qt 4.7 based applications for Symbian^3 based devices will be possible during Q1 2011.”

    When Qt 4.7 is ready for Symbian^3:
    -Qt 4.7 will be available to users, so if you publish software that requires it and users haven’t updated, the updates should be pulled in for them
    -A new SDK release will be available which provides 4.7
    -You won’t need to install any .sis files (which really, any advanced user, never mind developer should be able to install – If you’re on windows you can drag-and-drop .sis files to Ovi Suite)

    • http://www.johanpaul.com/blog/ Johan Paul

      I did read the page, and I knew I cannot put Qt 4.7 based apps in OVI Store. I just wanted to highlight this shortcoming in the post.

      There are two things I hope people will get from this post:
      - Qt 4.7 is still not support on Symbian dispite it was released in summer of 2010. Why? This impeds all relevant mobile development since I cannot use QML.
      - I could not install Qt 4.7 package on to the device. I am not a Symbian expert, but I know Qt. I think there are plenty of us in the mobile application domain – people who want to develop for Nokia, with their latest version of Qt, since they already have Qt experience. This is not possible.

  • sygys

    I only read problems about Qt, and the n900 store is still emty. Maybe nokia should stop making telephones and start making rubber again. everything nokia’s comes up with is garbage. while other companies like HTC, samsung and Apple are laughing out loud when they see the rubbish nokia releases.

    Nokia open your god damn eyes and start listen to the community.

    • http://www.johanpaul.com/blog/ Johan Paul

      I think Nokia has a good vision, they know what need to be done and Qt is great. These are the facts and I think these items will take Nokia far. It’s a matter of getting the vision out and utilise Qt as it is meant to be used and give us developers great tools, documentation and on time.

      But I hope Nokia listens to the feedback the (their) developer community is giving them. Time for making excuses is over.

  • So Meee

    Really, it’s not great fun developing for the Ovi Store. There’s whole blogs dedicated to complaining about the experience.

    http://angrynokiadeveloper.tumblr.com

  • Sreejith S.Mani

    Hi Johan,

    I am an amateur developer with Qt and have made some custom apps run successfully on my 5800xm S60v5. I wanted to upgrade my phone to have better memory and storage, since I am running out of resources.But now I am confused, if to go for a nokia 701 symbian belle with just 3.5″ screen or move to Android (Qt supported with necessitas – in theory, was not able to make it work completely on the simulator) OR go for a windows phone 7.5 with Visual Basic.

    I am sure pretty soon many of our fellow developers will reach the same junction. Any thoughts on this?

    - Sreejith

    • http://www.johanpaul.com/blog/ Johan Paul

      Hi Sreejith,

      That’s an excellent question and depending on who you ask and what your goals are, you might get different answers. So here’s mine.

      Forget Symbian, it’s dead.

      Android is a good mobile platform if you want to continue targeting the mobile platform. But I would not yet count on using Qt in Android for any serious apps but instead focus on Java with Google’s APIs.

      The future of Nokia is in Windows Phone. If you want to target Nokia phones, then Windows Phone is your choice. And it’s a solid platform to develop for with C# (or already with Visual Basic?) and the dev tools are great compared to Android. But from a developer’s perspective Windows Phone is more restrictive – think iPhone. But iPhone is doing great so it’s necessarily not a bad thing.

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