The just-concluded LinuxWorld Conference and Expo awarded its Product Excellence Award for the “best application development platform and tool” to Trolltech's Qtopia Phone Edition (QPE) version 4. Earlier this week, Trolltech unveiled the Greenphone, an “open” Linux-based phone that it plans to begin supplying to QPE application developers in September.

Qtopia Phone Edition application stack architecture
Trolltech describes Qtopia Phone Edition as “a comprehensive application platform and user interface for Linux-based mobile phones that is enhanced with pre-integrated applications allowing manufacturers and designers to build feature-packed phones, while maintaining complete control of branding and the user experience.”

Trolltech says it hopes the newly announced Greenphone (pictured at right) will help foster a third-party application ecosystem around the QPE Linux mobile phone stack. Such an ecosystem is “critical in satisfying growing customer demands, and shortening development and delivery cycle times,” it says. The device appears to be a working GSM/GPRS mobile phone endowed with a bootloader amenable to letting users re-flash the phone with modified Linux-based firmware, via a mini-USB port. It sports a QVGA (320 x 240) LCD touchscreen display, in addition to hardware buttons to support keypad-driven user interfaces. Lots more details are in our prior coverage.

According to Trolltech marketing VP Margaret McLeod, over four million Linux-based phones containing Qtopia Phone edition have shipped, to date.

Trolltech went public on the Oslo Stock Exchange on July 5 of this year.

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