Nokia Developer Day 2: Qt QML Workshop – Chiang Mai

I’ve just attended Nokia Developer Day  on 6-7 December 2011 in Chiang Mai.

I’ve already written a summary about the first day dealing with Series 40 Java and Web Apps Workshop.

The second day was focused on Qt/QML (Qt Meta-Language) software development for Nokia’s Symbian phones. Nokia will phase out Symbian operating system in 2016, but they’ll still support it until that time. Nokia will also port  Qt to lower end phones (e.g. Series 40) on a new operating system based on Linux called Meltemi.

Overall Business Direction & Strategy

The first 45-minutes for was presentation given by Grant Aaron McBeath, Managing Director, Nokia Thailand and Emerging Asia, about Nokia business direction: focus on Windows Phone for smartphones, Java/Web Apps for feature phones and future disruption. He also showed the progress of Nokia Ovi Store with 10 million downloads a day and 177 publishers with more than 1 million downloads. The new Nokia Lumia 710 and 800 (WP7) and Nokia Asha 300 & 303 were also showcased.

Some other interesting fact during the presentation:

• Once operator billing is enabled, you can get 20 times more purchase than with payment requiring a credit card.
• The best business model for app developers (at least in Thailand) is to provide freemium: try before you buy.

Finally, he talked about expected NFC growth in the next few years and different ways an application can be monetized:

• directly: paid download, subscriptions, in-app purchases…
• Indirectly: advertizing, sponsors…

Introduction to Qt Quick (QML) in Qt 4.7

The rest of the day 10:00 till 16:00 was devoted to Qt QML for Symbian workshop animated by Manikantan Krishnamurthy, Technical Manager, Nokia, Southeast Asia & Pacific.

The first thing to do is to download Nokia Qt SDK Windows offline (Qt_SDK_Win_offline_v1_1_3_en.exe)   and follow the installation procedure given at http://www.forum.nokia.com/Develop/Qt/Getting_started/

You can also download the Qt QML Workshop Presentation Slides.

There was first a quick introduction about Qt, Symbian and the Ovi Store. An overview of Qt Creator, Qt SDK and QML was then provided. Mani also quickly explained it was possible to use Remote Device Access to test your application on real phones remotely.

Then the worskhop started and only involved QML programming (similar to javascript in some respects). We basically followed what’s inside the slides above and learnt the following:

• Create a new Qt project for Symbian and run the hello world application in the Emulator.
• Create an application to display an image that can be moved to a new location by pressing the mouse button.
• States, Transition and Timer: Updating the application above by adding code that fades-in / fades-out the image.
• How to create an animation, list view, grid view etc… with QML
• Introduction to Qt Quick Components for Symbian.
• Create an application that converts degree Celsius to Kelvin with a text field, button (with image) and text showing the result. (cnxsoft: This was one of the most interesting part, as the source code was not available and we add to code ourselves and look for relevant API in Qt help, not just type the code in the PDF…).
• Create a MAP application using QtMobility.location 1.2 API where we were able to display the map, create a map circle, pan the map and zoom in/out with a slider.
• Create a multimedia application (Jukebox) that play/pauses and stop a MP3 file.

To conclude the workshop, mani explained how we could submit Qt applications to the Ovi Store.

This was followed by the Q&A session without any questions asked…

The day was concluded with a lucky draw for a Nokia C601 (and I was kindly explained it would not be my turn this time…), distribution of a certificate participation and a group picture.

All in all the workshop was quite interesting, but this was quite a rush (especially I was unable to copy /past the code in the PDF slides and had to type everything). But that’s fine as it gives good starting point to start developing your app. I may start playing around more with Qt once I receive my Nokia C601 and/or the Raspberry Pi becomes available.

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