Nokia today announced the release of the Qt SDK 1.1. The final release version of the SDK is based on Qt 4.7.3 and Qt Mobility 1.1.3. It's an important milestone which effectively marks the first fully mature version of Nokia's complete Qt offering on mobile platforms. Applications which use Qt 4.7, including those written purely in QML, can now be uploaded to the Ovi Store; the first few of these are already available to consumers.

Qt has been available for the Symbian, Maemo and MeeGo platforms for some time. However, the Qt SDK 1.1 release is the first version to include Qt Quick (QML) capabilities, which enables the quick creation of user interfaces. Also included is a mature version of the Qt Mobility APIs, which add mobile specific features and functions to Qt. 

Together, Qt Quick and Qt Mobility provide Qt with a set of features that substantially improve the experience for mobile developers, when compared to previous Qt releases (Qt 4.6 and earlier).
   

Qt SDK 1.1, Qt 4.7.3, Qt Mobility 1.1.3

The Qt SDK 1.1 follows on from the earlier releases of the beta and technology preview versions. The Qt 1.1 SDK is a merge of the Nokia Qt SDK 1.0 and the previous Qt SDK. It offers a complete development environment, utilising Qt Creator 2.1 and Qt Simulator 1.1, for writing Qt applications, with an emphasis on building and deploying Symbian and Maemo/MeeGo applications.

The most important point about this release, for mobile developers, is that it allows Qt 4.7 based applications (created with the SDK) to be published to Ovi Store; this includes Qt Quick based applications. The usual bug fixes have been rolled in and there are updates for simulator configuration and templates to reflect recent device announcements. For example, there is now an E6 configuration, which is useful for testing applications against a VGA screen resolution, with high pixel density.

As previously discussed, the Qt 1.1 SDK / Qt 4.7.x / Qt Mobility 1.1 releases are an important milestone. They bring a more mature set of mobile APIs, and QtWebKit 2.0. The inclusion of QML (Qt Quick) allows developers to quickly create compelling user interfaces.

In addition, the Qt SDK 1.1 releases has the Symbian Complimentary Package, which allows the use of native Symbian APIs in the development environment for Symbian^3 targets (i.e. the platform SDK is no longer needed to use native functionality). A further notable addition is the Remote Compiler, which allows for development on Nokia platforms from a Linux and Mac environment in addition to the standard Windows environment.

Qt SDK 1.1 contains Qt 4.7.3 and Qt Mobility 1.1.3, which also get their formal releases today. These are maintenance releases, with bug fixes, for the Qt 4.7.x and Qt Mobility 1.1.x branches. The Qt SDK can be downloaded from the Qt website or from Forum Nokia. Existing users of the technology preview or beta will receive an automatic notification to upgrade to the beta release.

This video from Forum Nokia introduces the new features delivered in Qt SDK 1.1: