[Qt-interest] How can I write Qt apps for my everyday cell phone?

[Atlant Schmidt]

K Frank:

  I'm just "thinking out loud" here mostly in the hopes
  of provoking more comments from the rest of the list...


> Which cell phone?

  That depends on what you're trying to do, of course.
  If you're just developing apps for yourself, then
  you'd like to develop on the phone you already own, no?
  Do you have an Android phone? There's a project underway
  to bring Qt to those phones, right?

  For iPhone, there's another project underway but my
  *IMPRESSION* is that it isn't as far along.

  If you're developing apps for public release, then
  you definitely want to target either or both of those
  two popular platforms.

  For Blackberry RIM, you'd be out of luck, I think.

  And contrary to Bo's advice, I certainly wouldn't enter
  the Symbian (or Maemo/MeeGo) world at this time (especially
  in North America); while Symbian and Maemo/MeeGo may have
  the most-complete development environment and support
  right now, it just seems like you'd be asking for heartache
  a short ways down the road when Nokia abandons you.


> Special hardware?

  Probably not, as long as you can FTP apps to the phone
  (or copy them in with the phone operating in USB disk
  mode or some such). Of course, if you're planning (;-))
  on "bricking" your phone in the course of development,
  you may want the magical (and unobtainable?) JTAG flashing
  station for your phone so you can restore a "bricked" phone.


> Special host? (etc.)

  Doubtful. Nokia does all of their development on a BOG-
  standard PC; can Android development be that much different?

  You will need a good compiler/linker toolchain for the
  architecture in your phone (ARM, almost certainly).
  They vary from the free gcc toolchain to costly commercial
  toolchains.


> QML/Qt Mobility

  (I can't speak for QML.)

  For traditional Qt, Qt Mobility will almost certainly
  contain APIs that you'll want to use in any meaningful
  mobile app. Your Qt desktop knowledge should still be
  very useful for such apps.


> Fone Phlakiness

  It's certainly possible to destabilize your phone with a
  badly-behaved app (isn't S60 the existence proof of that?).
  You can draw too much CPU, hog too much memory, use too
  much of the Flash File System (NOR or NAND), hog the radio,
  burn down the battery, burn too much network data, etc.

  But I don't think there's *TOO MUCH* to fear if you're
  paying reasonable attention and taking reasonable care
  to use the usual good software engineering practices.


                          Atlant


-----Original Message-----
From: qt-interest-bounces+aschmidt=dekaresearch.com at qt.nokia.com [mailto:qt-interest-bounces+aschmidt=dekaresearch.com at qt.nokia.com] On Behalf Of K. Frank
Sent: Tuesday, August 23, 2011 12:09
To: Qt-interest
Subject: [Qt-interest] How can I write Qt apps for my everyday cell phone?

Hello List!

In a short summary, what are some of the the concrete things I would
have to do to build and run Qt apps on a cell phone I use day to day?

I know this is an open-ended question, but any practical advice would
be appreciated.

What cell phone should I buy?  (I live in the northeast U.S. and use
Verizon Wireless, and I don't want to change.)  I would want a good
quality smart phone, but I would be willing to make some compromises
to get a convenient Qt platform.

Would I need any special hardware to build the apps or load them onto
the cell phone?  Would I need a special version of Qt or a certain compiler,
or other software?  (Right now I use mingw for Qt.)

Would I need a special host for development?  (Right now I use windows,
but it could be linux.)

Where would QML and Qt mobility come into all of this?

How much of my desktop Qt knowledge and code would be useful for my
cell phone apps?

I don't really mind if my apps themselves are buggy (my fault, at any rate),
but how much would I risk making my cell phone flaky or unusable?

Any hidden gotcha's or expenses?

Any other quick thoughts?

Thanks.


K. Frank
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