(PR excerpt) — Trolltech today released Qtopia 1.6, an embedded Linux application platform, and announced that there are now over 1000 third-party Qtopia applications available.

Qtopia 1.6 is a complete, powerful application platform, enabling the creation of state of the art mobile devices. Being able to customize not only the look and feel, but also the screen size and orientation of a mobile device, gives manufacturers the control they seek over their devices.

The Qtopia developer community, representing both open source and commercial developers, has created over a thousand applications for the platform. Based on the multiplatform Qt C++ application framework, the Qtopia SDK enables developers to create powerful applications efficiently. Additionally, those same applications can run on all major desktop operating systems, due to the portability of the Qt framework.

New features in Qtopia 1.6 include . . .

• Application Compatibility: All existing Qtopia applications are able to run, unchanged, on Qtopia 1.6.
• Outlook Synchronization: Qtopia 1.6 comes equipped with personal information management synchronization with Microsoft(R) Outlook(R) via Qtopia Desktop.
• Today application: Qtopia's new Today application, which provides an update for the coming day, let's users select which data they wish to display. Default settings include calendar events, received email, and to do items.
• Plug-in framework: Qtopia 1.6 contains a new plug-in framework for adding new features to Qtopia devices. Users will be able to easily update their application taskbar, add new fonts, plug in new multimedia formats, add/remove input methods and many other features.
• End-user customization: Includes icon size and layout, add background colors or pictures, and change the color and look of the windows and buttons.
• Display customization: Manufacturers can focus on what they like doing best — creating innovative hardware designs. Qtopia 1.6 supports multiple display sizes (176 x 204, 240 x 320 and 480 x 640 pixels) and both landscape and portrait orientation.
• Voice Recorder: Qtopia's new Voice Recorder provides users with a powerful recording application. Users can select quality levels of recording, including bit rate and mono or stereo sound.
• Improved Qtopia Desktop: There have been numerous improvements to Qtopia Desktop, including the addition of one-click application installation, back-up and restore functionality, synchronization across wireless networks, and a large number of usability improvements.
• Other improvements: Completely re-written multimedia player with customizable skins, improved image viewer with better image scaling, improved user interface for PIM applications, improved application install/remove, and a variety of smaller improvements.

Qtopia 1.6 free edition and Qtopia Desktop for Microsoft Windows and Linux are available for immediate download from the Trolltech website. Qtopia 1.6 commercial edition is immediately available.

 
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