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Qtopia - 4.3.0 Release Notes

• Introduction
• Enhancements
• Bug Fixes
• Known Issues

Introduction

The Qtopia 4.3.0 release (also known as 4.3 Beta) is a feature release of Qtopia that is based on Qt 4.3 technology. The main purpose of this release is to provide APIs for new functionality so that third party developers and product integrators may begin to write code for Qtopia 4.3.x devices.

For the first time, this release of Qtopia makes the source code of the full Qtopia telephony stack available to both commercial and opensource developers under our dual licensing model. Previously, this code was only available to commercial customers.

Enhancements

1. Bluetooth
   • A Bluetooth FTP client application has been added.
   • The Bluetooth Settings application has been rewritten to provide a significantly improved user-interface.
   • Qtopia now provides an OpenOBEX wrapper API, to simply working with OBEX in object-oriented programs.
2. Call History
   • The Call History application is now timezone-aware.
   • When a new SIM is inserted, the call list stored in the SIM is read and integrated with the master list on the device.
   • The user can now view all types of calls in one list, in addition to viewing Missed, Reveived and Dialed calls in separate lists.
3. Code Quality
   • Large amounts of unused legacy code left over from previous Qtopia versions has been removed, making the Qtopia code easier to understand, debug and customize.
4. Document Management
   • The contents of the Documents menu can now be filtered by entering characters, in a similar fashion to filtering of Contacts.
   • Handling of MIME types has been refactored to improve reliability and to work correctly with third-party applications.
   • A new Document Server exposes the functionality of the Document System using a Unix Domain Socket based server. Untrusted applications may connect to the server and utilize a select sub-set of the document system features without requiring direct access to the documents database.
5. Documentation
   • The Qtopia Reference Documentation has been extensively revised for this release; several new tutorials have been added, the System Integration Guide has been significantly expanded, and there have been many minor corrections and improvements.
6. Input Methods
   • Pinyin, an example Chinese input method, has been added to Qtopia.
   • A Predictive Keyboard input method has been added. This allows predictively-matched text input to be entered on finger-driven touchscreen devices.
7. Memory Management
   • Qtopia's handling of out-of-memory conditions has been significantly improved.
8. Multimedia
   • The GStreamer media engine has been integrated into Qtopia. The code achieving the integration is included in Qtopia source packages, but GStreamer itself must be obtained separately.
   • Shuffle and Repeat features have been added to the Media Player.
   • The appearance of the Media Player user interface has been improved.
   • This release supports integration of the Real Networks Helix DNA Client version 3.1 (Atlas).
9. Multiple Displays
   • On a dual-screen device, the primary and secondary displays can now have different wallpapers images set.
10. Networking
    • Qtopia now supports 802.11 wireless networking, including WPA2 and WPA-EAP.
11. PIM
    • Tasks with a due date set will now appear in the day view of the Calendar application.
    • Tasks now have the same recurrence feature as Calendar events.
    • Taksk can now have reminders.
12. Outlook integration
    • The new Qtopia Sync Agent allows PIM data to be synchronized between Qtopia and Microsoft Outlook.
13. QPicture
    • Support for the QPicture image format has been added to Qtopia. At build-time, SVG images can be pre-rendered into QPicture format. This improves performance at run-time.
14. Ringtones
    • Support for Video Ringtones has been added in this release. Video Ringtones are controlled using the Profiles application.
    • Support for Per-group Rintones has been added in this release. Ringtones can be associated with groups of contacts in the Contacts applications.
15. Security and Package Management
    • This release introduces the Qtopia Safe eXecution Environment (SXE). SXE is designed to download third-party native applications, initially only games, which are run in a secure sandbox environment with controlled access to Qtopia resources and services. This release however contains an experimental system wide SXE that allows vendors to control how all applications access system resources and services.
    • The Software Packages application has also been overhauled to improve usability and to provide full integration with SXE.
16. SIM Toolkit
    • Call control by SIM is now supported.
    • Displaying icons is now supported.
    • Displaying the idle mode string on the home screen is now supported.
    • Setup Event List command is now supported.
    • Playing of tones is now supported.
17. Support for the Neo 1973 device (a.k.a. FIC GTA01)
    • This release provides the new ficgta01 device configuration profile and the new Finxi theme allowing Qtopia to run on the Neo 1973.
18. Telephony
    • Qtopia's telephony stack and user interface have undergone significant changes to bring Qtopia closer to GCF compliance.
    • Qtopia now allows the user time to see that an incoming call is being received before allowing the user to enter key events that would operate on the incoming call.
19. Theming and Styles
    • A new default Qtopia theme has been created for this release. The previous theme, used for Qtopia 4.1 and Qtopia 4.2 has been retained as the Classic theme.
    • A new Finxi (Norwegian for "touch") theme has been created to demonstrate how theming can be used to customize the Qtopia user interface for touchscreen devices that are controlled by the user's fingers rather than by a stylus.
    • Significant improvements have been made to the appearance and behaviour of the standard widgets used in Qtopia.
20. Voice over IP
    • A new example project has been provided, demonstrating integration of the Asterisk IAX protocol into Qtopia.

Bug Fixes

Note: In addition to those items listed below, all bug fixes made to date during the Qtopia 4.2.x series (4.2.1 to 4.2.5) that are relevant for Qtopia 4.3 are included in this release.

1. Emergency Calls
   • BUG 179910: In touchscreen mode, emergency calls could not be placed when the device was PIN locked.
   • BUG 179913: Additional emergency numbers 110, 999, 118 and 119 have been added in accordance with GSM 22.101 standard.
2. Input Methods
   • BUG 177768: The Handwriting Recognition input method was biasing its fuzzy matching towards completed words, causing inaccurate pre-edit text to be displayed when partial words were entered.
3. Media Player
   • BUG 138734: If the Media Player was backgrounded while a video was playing, the video widget would not hide, instead staying on top of all other windows.
4. Messages:
   • BUG 120160: Messages wasn't starting/stopping network when fetching mail.
   • BUG 123694: Outgoing messages were saved in Drafts instead of Outbox in Airplane Safe Mode.
   • BUG 139837: Messages refused to process attachments larger than 2Mb.
   • BUG 140806: The user was not audibly notified when an MMS message is received.
   • BUG 176946: Under some circumstances, the Messages application would display the wrong message when a new message was received.
5. Notes
   • BUG 112391: The Notes application was unable to open large text files. As this application is intended for viewing small text notes, a limit of 256Kb has been imposed, beyond which the application will refuse to open files.
6. Server
   • BUG 135563: The Softkey Menu did not become scrollable when too big for the screen.
7. User Interface
   • BUG 175566: No Euro currency symbol was present in the default Qtopia fonts.

Known Issues

1. Greenphone:
   • BUG 171152: Due to a bug in the modem firmware, outgoing calls may not be cancelled correctly if the user presses the hangup key while the call is in the "dialing" state. Qtopia attempts to work around this by attempting to cancel the call after it transitions from "dialing' to "alerting". This strategy fails in cases where the call transitions directly from "dialing" to "connected".
   • BUG 172654: The Greenphone's hardware volume keys do not control the audio volume on the device. This feature was previously working in Qtopia 4.2.
   • BUG 179229: The Greenphone modem does not report whether an incoming call has been diverted from another number. Thus Qtopia is unable to indicate Call Diversion to the user, and the Greenphone therefore fails to achieve GCF Standard Compliance for this function.
   • BUG 180204: In this release the Greenphone does not play Midi files. This feature was previously working in Qtopia 4.2.
2. Media Player:
   • BUG 142554: After a call ends, Media Player incorrectly resumes playback of media file if the file was paused when the call was received.
3. Messages:
   • BUG 142744: MMS audio doesn't play to completion if the audio track is longer than the slideshow.
4. Server Widgets:
   • BUG 148987: The Task Manager list only works correctly with the Standard Qtopia server widgets.
5. Touchscreen:
   • BUG 184982: Spinboxes are very hard to control on finger-driven touchscreen due to the small size of the up and down arrow controls.