There are some very interesting details in the Reviewing the Release Plan from David Wood about the future of the Symbian platform.
The biggest news for me is the switch to Qt. Taken from David, here is what Symbian^4 is about:
- Qt optimised for the Symbian platform
- A new “Orbit” extension library for Qt, which contains more than 50 widgets tailored for mobile user experience, and which will provide a replacement for the existing “Avkon” widget set;
- The application suite re-factored and re-written to take advantage of Qt APIs, Orbit widget, and Direct UI.
According to an earlier post, Symbian^4 is expected for 2010 (with device starting to reach the market in the beginning of 2011). That is definitely an important move for Symbian Foundation and us developers.
An important move that seems to have started today already with the introduction of std::string type in some new APIs introduced in the N97 SDK recently introduced by Forum Nokia (bye bye descriptors ? I know a couple of people that will be happy!).
Finally, will Symbian development become easy one day in the near future ? THAT is the good news.
Hi Eric,
Thanks for the nice summary!
However, I think the headline "Qt to replace S60 in 2011" is a bit misleading. I would write, instead, "Qt to replace Avkon in 2010".
From the picture of the release schedule that you linked to, Symbian^4 is expected to be hardened around the end of 2010. This means that devices could be reaching the market (ready for consumer purchase) at that time. In other words, these devices should be available "at the beginning of 2011" rather than (as you suggested) "in the second part" of that year.
// David Wood, Symbian
Hi David,
Thanks for the comment and correction. S60 was intentionnally used as Avkon might be a cryptic name for many people but I agree that the title was a bit misleading.
Eric
What I've been wondering about is - what's the point of "Symbian" (as opposed to just using Linux) in all this in the first place, if the upper level software itself is based on Qt and other "standard" technologies. Compared to Linux, Symbian is rather fat an OS layer that would seem mostly to 1) kill performance and 2) be a portability headache.
> Finally, will Symbian development become easy one day in the near future ? > THAT is the good news.
It has become easier already. Here you can get Qt port for S60:
http://pepper.troll.no/s60prereleases/
The same view was in my mind before i checked S60 Qt API. The main string class is QString but not std::string. You can see it here - http://pepper.troll.no/s60prereleases/doc/qstring.html I think that the usage of std::string at HS API is a requisite of WebKit or something else that used as HS render.
Thanks for this nice information.
Please tell me, As a developer what should I do. Should I start reading Qt to compete the market and acquiring the new prospects because I am not familiar with this environment.
Please guide and suggest me and provide some link for related docs if possible..
Looking for favorable reply
Thanks a lot
Well, just a thought
With Avkon replaced with Qt and system APIs replaced with standard C++ library ... what's a point to keep a Symbian kernel then? With all it's limitations and overheads towards "standard" C++ programming.