Ericsson's announcement last February of the Linux-based HS210 cordless screen phone disclosed a partnership with Opera Software for embedded browser technology. Earlier this week, another Ericsson announcement revealed that Red Hat has supplied Ericsson with embedded Linux operating system technology for the HS210, and that the two companies are collaborating on the development of a broad range of technologies, products, and services for home communications.

Notably absent from either of the two Ericsson partnership announcements, however, was any mention of the HS210's embedded GUI software. Was it an as yet unannounced Red Hat embedded GUI? SuSE's Tiny-X? Microwindows? The following additional partnership announcement clears up the mystery of the embedded GUI . . .

Santa Clara, CA — (press release) — Trolltech has announced a partnership with Ericsson Home Communications. Ericsson will use Trolltech's Qt/Embedded as the graphical user interface (GUI) solution for their upcoming Cordless Screen Phone, the Linux-based HS210.

Qt/Embedded is Trolltech's new graphical user interface system for embedded Linux. It is based on the popular and well-proven cross-platform development tool Qt for desktop Linux, Unix and Microsoft Windows. Qt lets developers write the source code once and target a wide range of platforms. Ericsson's familiarity with desktop Qt allowed an easy transition to Qt/Embedded.

Ericsson's Cordless Screen Phone will provide convergence of datacom and telecom technologies into a compact, portable touch screen and small base station. In addition to being a cordless phone with an answering machine and messaging center, it will provide web browsing and email access. Ericsson will use Bluetooth wireless communication technology to enable the cordless element of the HS210.

“The HS210 is one of the first mass-produced products using embedded Linux,” said Haavard Nord, Trolltech's CEO. “It is a testimony to how well embedded Linux can
perform. The Ericsson phone is expected to be one of the most exciting new products released this winter, and we are very excited to be a part of it. We are providing Ericsson with a unique user interface solution that offers a state-of-the-art GUI environment for developing software. Having Ericsson using Qt/Embedded before our official product launch adds a very nice testimony to the quality of our product.”

Ericsson made the decision to use Qt/Embedded due to its low memory footprint, dedicated product architecture for embedded systems, and strong levels of support. Qt/Embedded offers significant memory savings and additional features like anti-aliased text and alpha blended pixmaps since it is completely independent of the X Window System (X11).

“Memory usage is always a concern in embedded systems,” said Benoit Hanssen, Ericsson's Product Development Manager, Multimedia Terminals “With Qt/Embedded we can reduce the need for memory. The significant ROM and RAM savings allow us to better control cost and use the available memory for new features.”

About Trolltech

Trolltech provides high quality software components that enable customers to develop efficient, maintainable commercial-grade software. The flagship product, Qt offers a cross-platform graphical user interface toolkit that is a fully object-oriented and easily extensible C++ application framework that enables rapid building of state-of-the-art GUI applications. Qt has formed the basis of many successful commercial applications worldwide, as well as being the basis for the KDE Linux desktop environment. Trolltech is headquartered in Oslo, Norway, with offices in Brisbane, Australia, and Santa Clara, California.

Related stories:
Ericsson and Red Hat collaborate on home communications
Ericsson cordless phone / Internet appliance runs Linux
Ericsson puts Linux & browser on cordless screen phone
Trolltech announces beta of QT/Embedded embedded GUI
Tiny-X: an embeddable X Window server
Vers 0.88 Nano-X and Microwindows are released

 
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