The Linux platform has now completely made is road to the phone devices in Europe (except with Motorola that has been quite successful with its hard to find A760). The Linux OS is indeed interesting for a phone manufacturer due to its open-source license but it was really missing a suitable GUI. This issue is now solved thanks to Trolltech. But be warned that Linux does not mean free in the embedded world. And the Qtopia Phone Editition is rather expensive for a phone manufacturer... but also for the application developer as the SDK is sold US$195 by Trolltech.

Qtopia Phone's architecture contains five main components: The platform, the applications, the user interface, the development environment, and the synchronization framework.

The first release of Qtopia Phone includes a comprehensive suite of applications, customized to fit into a phone user interface, plus a 'Home' screen that presents time critical data such as missed calls, messages received, and calendar events.

In future releases, Qtopia Phone will include additional phone-oriented applications, including a messaging client, SIM card manager, and a dialer.

Qtopia Phone Edition Content

- Phone User Interface: Designed specifically with a mobile phone user in mind, Qtopia Phone's user interface is a customizable, icon- and list-based interface designed to work on a screen as small as 176 x 208 pixels, using keyboard or touchscreen based navigation. It can be personalized by end users and customized by manufacturers and network operators.

  Applications: Qtopia Phone includes a powerful suite of phone applications, including PIM, productivity, email, games, media player (MP3, MPEG, and others), and a variety of utilities for phone personalization.

  Platform: Qtopia Phone's core functionality exists in the platform-level features. By providing a powerful operating environment, Qtopia Phone provides smartphone functionality using a modest amount of memory.

  Synchronization: Users can synchronize their phone with either Qtopia Desktop, a multiplatform desktop PIM suite from Trolltech, or with Microsoft (R) Outlook. Qtopia Phone can synchronize contacts, calendar events, to-do items, as well as multimedia files and documents.

  Development Environment: In order to properly customize a phone, manufacturers require powerful tools. Trolltech provides a suite of tools that developers can use to customize and extend Qtopia Phone. The powerful development environment makes it easy to develop on a desktop system, then cross-compile onto a target device.

More details are available on TrollTech web site.