Qt, the application environment that underpins a lot of modern Symbian app development, has just hit a major milestone for the future - Qt 5 is now available to developers in Alpha form, for testing and feedback. Note that as things currently stand Qt 5 will not be available for Symbian, but it does remain central to Nokia's plan for connection the next billion, so it's worth taking a moment to look at what's new.

From the Qt blog:

Trolltech released Qt 4 almost seven years ago, and today the community is celebrating the first joint release of Qt 5 Alpha under the Qt Project umbrella....

Qt 5 reflects the changing landscape. The web and mobile devices have changed our lives. User interface technologies have moved from static widgets to a fluid touch based experience. The Qt user base has grown from primarily targeting desktop “only” to now targeting various desktop, embedded and mobile platforms – and with a strong need to provide a seamless interaction with the web and the cloud.

In this alpha release the first signs of Qt’s next generation are available for testing and feedback. For the Alpha we have focussed on delivering the foundation for Qt 5 – Qt Essential modules – and not the entire expected feature richness of Qt 5. The final release of Qt 5 will strengthen Qt’s position as a leading edge development framework for multiple industries, and offer a straightforward way to port Qt 4 applications to Qt 5.

Qt 5 will make it easier and faster to create
•    Smooth, accelerated graphics performance with limited resources by making better use of the GPU resulting in better performance on inexpensive hardware.  Qt 5 on Raspberry Pi is a nice example.
•    Advanced UIs and applications with QML and Javascript. See the Qt Media Hub as an example.
•    Powerful apps connected to the web.
•    Product variants through lightweight, project-specific builds.

Please note that the alpha release will be a source-only release without binaries to download, so you need to build the binaries yourselves: instructions on how to do this... Given that Qt now is developed openly at the Qt Project, it is extra important that you contribute and bring your feedback to the table.

...And for those involved in the development of Qt: please note that registration for the Qt Contributors Summit is now open, join us!

Note that we currently have Qt 4.7.4 on most of our Symbian smartphones. 

Comments welcome if you're a Qt developer? How big a deal is Qt 5 for you?