Run with MeeGo

Today's users are demanding more powerful and feature-rich devices to take with them on the go. Next-generation smartphones allow users to enjoy a rich and dynamic Internet experience, watch HD movies and multitask like never before on a small-form-factor device. The MeeGo platform is specifically designed to enable the application and services ecosystem for these mobile, rich Internet and media-centric devices.

The MeeGo v1.1 Handsets UX (Figure 10) provides a technology snapshot that offers key handset technologies, such as cellular, connectivity, sensors and mobile browsing, as well as a basic development UX for voice calling, SMS messaging, Web browsing, music and video playback, photo viewing and connection management.

With this project release, developers will be able to work on future device and user experience software development, while simultaneously participating in the MeeGo Project to complete the Handset UX in the upcoming 1.2 release.

Figure 10. The MeeGo Handset Dialer (photo credit: meego.com)

The MeeGo SDK 1.1 beta was released on November 10, 2010, and it's available for download along instructions from meego.com/developers. It enables application developers to develop, install and debug applications, as well as run applications on the Nokia N900, Netbook and Aava devices with MeeGo. For developers without reference hardware, QEMU (qemu.org) provides an emulated environment for debugging and testing applications.

The MeeGo Project encourages developers to use the MeeGo API, which currently consists of Qt 4.7 and Qt Mobility 1.0. The MeeGo API comes with a forward-compatibility promise and will be extended in future releases. The final nonbeta version of the SDK will be aligned with the MeeGo compliance specification (being finalized at the time of this writing). More information on MeeGo compliance is available at wiki.meego.com/Quality/Compliance.

MeeGo is an open-source project developed in public under the auspices of the Linux Foundation. Since it was announced in February 2010, the world has been able to watch and participate as the project builds up and delivers the core software stack in addition to three reference user experiences for handsets, IVI systems and Netbooks, with more to come as MeeGo also targets connected TVs and tablets.

The development continues following a six-month release schedule. MeeGo 1.2 is scheduled for April 2011. Currently, there are hundreds of features targeting MeeGo 1.2 that already have been filed in the MeeGo Featurezilla (a tool that tracks feature development). The development tree of MeeGo 1.2 is open, and development is ongoing.