[Interest] qt vs web-runtime

[Jason H]

Intel has the x86 Andoid problem fixed with binary translation. Your NDK arguments are moot.



________________________________
 From: Stephen Bryant <steve at bawue.de>
To: interest at qt-project.org 
Sent: Wednesday, May 2, 2012 6:05 AM
Subject: Re: [Interest] qt vs web-runtime
 

Hi,
 
> in the company there's Qt Vs phonegap (and other web-runtime).
> I'm obviously biased. What are the objective points in favor of Qt? I can
> not say anything about the Windows and Android we are not yet stable.
 
The native binary that you compile when using Qt will give much better performance than the VM - especially with Android 2.1 and earlier.  Given that the web view will also be natively compiled for the user's hardware, the performance differences may be a non-issue.  It depends a lot on what your app does.
 
However, you must expect binary compatibility problems in the future.  Intel is looking to grab a share of the market, and remember also that MIPS got themselves Android certified before Intel did.  There may also be edge cases of incompatibility between the various vendors' ARM-based solutions.
 
You'd have a significantly increased amount of testing to do, across the various hardware types.  A HTML/JS based solution sidesteps that problem.
 
An Android user is unlikely to know details about which CPU they have, and I have not yet seen a clean solution for making a single apk which supports multiple architectures...  but I haven't been looking very hard either!
 
Perhaps somebody else on this list has looked into it.
 
How much control do you have over your target platform?
Personally, I would not recommend Qt for creating Android apps for the general public, purely because of the testing and deployment issues.  This is not the case for iOS; don't know about WinPhone hardware.
 
If you are looking to target Android, WinPhone and iOS with a cross-platform app, and if the app's functionality is possible with HTML/JS, I would suggest looking at PhoneGap with jQuery Mobile.
 
I should also mention that there is a port of PhoneGap to the 'Qt platform' called 'callback-qt'.  It's a little lacking in plugins, but it does work.  This means you can have your PhoneGap app run on Windows, Linux etc - which may help development.
 
 
> I do not like losing...
 
If you let your personal preference trump your objectivity, I would say you had already lost!  What is the best solution for the person who has to use the software you produce?
 
Steve
_______________________________________________
Interest mailing list
Interest at qt-project.org
http://lists.qt-project.org/mailman/listinfo/interest
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.qt-project.org/pipermail/interest/attachments/20120502/fa712262/attachment.html>