Qt 5.2 Beta Available

I'm happy to announce that Qt 5.2 Beta is now available. Lots of things have happened since Qt 5.1. Apart from new platforms, we have also added a significant amount of new functionality and done large improvements under the hood.

Qt Everywhere

With Qt 5.2 we are introducing the production-ready ports of Qt on Android and iOS. A lot of work has gone into these two platforms and these ports now extend Qt's multi-platform promise to cover desktop, embedded and mobile platforms with just one framework, Qt.

With full support for Android, iOS and Blackberry 10, Qt 5.2 is a great solution for targeting the mobile markets with one Qt-based mobile application code. This is also a big plus for our existing Qt users. It makes it fast and easy to bring your existing desktop or embedded application to mobile, by simply recompiling it.

Enhanced Internals -- More Power and Flexibility

Qt 5.2 introduces a new Scene Graph renderer. This new renderer improves the graphics performance of Qt Quick even further, freeing up more CPU time for the application and using the GPU in a much more efficient way.

The former JavaScript engine, V8, which was used internally by Qt Quick, has been replaced with a completely new, Qt-specific engine. This new engine is now designed from scratch for the use case of QML and Qt Quick. It internally operates directly with Qt data types, avoiding many costly conversions. It has both a JIT and an interpreter which greatly extends the range of platforms and operating systems it can support. The interpreter also allows us to use the engine on iOS and comply with iOS AppStore policies.

New Modules and Nice Goodies

Some of the main new features of Qt 5.2 include:

• Qt Bluetooth: supported on Linux with Bluez 4.x and Blackberry
• Qt NFC: supported on Blackberry
• Qt Positioning: supported on all platforms using NMEA data, and using GeoClue on Linux
• Qt Windows Extras: Integrate with native code on Windows
• Qt Mac Extras: Integrate with native code on Mac OS X
• Qt Android Extras: Integrate with native code on Android
• Improved time zone and locale support with QTimeZone and QCollator
• Enhancements to multiple Qt Widgets and a new one, the QKeySequenceEdit class
• Animations for QML that can not be blocked by high loads on the main thread
• Some new features and mobile specific controls for Qt Quick Controls
• Accessibility is now fully supported on all desktop platforms and basic support on Android.

For a more detailed list of all new features in Qt 5.2 please have a look at the New Features page in the Qt Project wiki.

Qt Creator 3.0

Qt 5.2 will ship together with a new release of Qt Creator, Qt Creator 3.0. The beta for Qt Creator 3.0 has also been released today and is part of the Qt 5.2 beta binary packages. The new Qt Creator will feature improved Android support, experimental iOS support, a cleanup in the Creator plugin APIs and improved support for lldb.

Qt 5.2 Beta now comes with binary installers for Windows, Mac and Linux. You can get Qt 5.2 Beta from the Qt Project download area for open source users, and in the Qt Enterprise Customer Portal for existing Qt Enterprise customers.