So whats in the box?
8 APIs at a Beta level of maturity, 3 new APIs at a Technology Preview level of maturity, some new demonstration applications and many more updates

If you were the kind of kid who liked to rip the wrapping of your pressie and get straight to playing, then you will be interested to try the new demo applications first.

We have included:
Flickr demo , which displays a list of flickr images corresponding to the users current location, (or for demo purposes, a hard-coded location is used if there is no GPS source).

Weather Info demo
This displays the weather forecast at the users current location or again, for demo purposes, if no GPS is found then a default location is used. (As you can see its pretty hot these days in Brisbane).

“Lightmaps” demo which is an update to an older demo you may have seen, it shows a lookup of the local street map based on the users location, as determined by GPS.
If no GPS is detected a default location is selected.

The above all utilise the new Bearer Management and Location APIs.

In total there 27 examples. Although some are fairly sparse simple API feature examples, others are a little more interesting, like the above.

Also, for those who like to take their time and get a understand things before diving in, you may enjoy reading our new Whitepaper which covers all of the Beta level APIs.

What else?
Oh yeah, in addition to the source package with documentation updates we have sis and debian packages for you to try on your Maemo and Symbian devices.
Our webpage will direct you toward where you can obtain the downloads.

For those wondering how you can contribute:
The team are moving as fast as they can to offer new APIs, documentation and examples.
There is a lot of work ahead for us, and some great new APIs we hope to include in the future. The todo list is ever growing and our efforts, to be honest, are prioritizing first our Symbian and Maemo platforms. What we would benefit from is contributions toward other Qt platforms which are currently on a lower priority list for the team, but certainly would offer value to developers.
Note: Where we are introducing one of our APIs into Qt, we will first ensure appropriate platform support coverage is in place.

Next steps?
We will continue to mature the APIs and, for most, finalize in the next months.
Sensors and Camera APIs, which are currently at a Technology Preview level of maturity are likely to finalize a little later, as we hope to validate those, with your input, for a while longer.
Other APIs under development include: Document Gallery, Service Framework (out of process), Landmarks, Calendar and many more are on the list to be scheduled.

Have fun with the release and we welcome your feedback and contributions.

kind regards,
Gerard.

PS..
For those of you lucky enough to be attending MWC 2010 in Barcelona you will be able to see some of our demos at the Qt Booth. Its also a good opportunity to meet some of the Qt team face to face. The trolls are located in Hall 1 at stand #1E44.

As promised, an updated package is now available for you to download.
This update includes the aformentioned Symbian .sis package with install instructions

Have fun with the preview and we will keep the updates coming your way!

Note: the included example applications are simple desktop implementations. Feel free to modify, or better still, share something cool of your own.

Even more good news:
Our buddies over at Forum Nokia are running a competition that may be of interest to you!
Check this out:> Qt Mobility Contest

The Qt Mobility Project here at Nokia has come quite some way and the next step is to share our Technology Preview package of the APIs with you!

Our intention is to share early and share often, and so this release follows from the individual Qt Labs releases we have made available over the last few months.
At this stage in the game, the majority of the APIs themselves are of a good quality and more appropriately labeled BETA, however as work is still in progress on some of the backends the team have decided to label this package as our ‘Technical Preview’.

Upon finalization of the APIs, which is targeted for Q2 2010, they will be made available as a Qt Solution (Qt add on, for those unfamiliar with the term), and provided under the same licensing as Qt. Following this the individual APIs will incrementally will be added into future Qt releases.
You will start to see that process during 2010.

On commencing the Qt Mobility Project our initial thoughts were that the new APIs we would bring to Qt would be of use largely to our Mobile application developer communities, but as the project has evolved we see substantial value for other platforms, not just mobile.

Our project goals are unchanged; to make Qt an even more comprehensive application and UI framework by developing new APIs to meet the evolving needs developers. The Software development world is a dynamic place these days, new hardware and service technologies are being presented all the time. Developers want to take advantage of this and so it is our objective to make sure Qt can lead the way.

Within Nokia the Qt Mobility Project continues to be led by our Qt Development Frameworks team with collaboration from Symbian, Maemo, Services and several others from within Nokia R&D. We continue to adopt an open and flexible approach toward requirement input and will continue co-designing with some of Nokia’s best architects. Receiving input from the wider development community is viewed and valued as an essential part of the process.

The technology preview package contains a few example applications, which were not part of our scoped deliverable and are therefore only simple desktop implementations. They should help to get you started and we welcome contributions to polish them. In the meantime, our focus remains on the cross-platform APIs.

The continued development of the new APIs can be followed here on Qt Labs. Please continue to contribute and help us make this initiative a success for developers. We have also set up a new mailing list which you can subscribe to.

So for now, please download our Technology Preview package which contains the new APIs (source code), documentation and the aforementioned examples. It is intended that a .sis package for Symbian will follow in the next weeks, stay tuned.

Thankyou, Gerard & Alex.