Yesterday saw two announcements that further the options for developers to bring their applications to the S60 platform. Qt Software announced a new technology preview of Qt for S60 and Forum Nokia released Mobile Extensions for Qt for S60. More or less at the same time Red Five Labs announced the availability of Net60 version 2.1 with many improvements and support for the S60 5th Edition touch UI.

The latest Qt for S60 Technology Preview is an incremental step towards full Qt support on S60 devices. Code named ‘Garden’, this version is based on Qt 4.5. In addition, Forum Nokia has released the Mobile Extensions for Qt for S60 (try saying that in a hurry!) Mobile Extensions provide a number of Qt style APIs for accessing S60 features such as the contacts records and device location information. It appears some of these APIs depend on the Extensions APIs for S60 and a forthcoming update of Open C/C++, so this is still something for the hardcore coder.

More information can be found on the Forum Nokia Qt for S60 page.

Net60 has now arrived at its fourth release and Red Five Labs are claiming it offers a much improved WinForms UI and overall performance. In addition, support for touch screen devices has been added for the first time.
In my view Net60 is one of the more interesting independent runtime options for S60, opening up the possibility for both commercial and enterprise software developers to take advantage of S60 devices.
A 30-day trial is available, even if you trialled an earlier version. In addition, you could get a Free Net60 Professional license by responding to a survey Red Five Labs is conducting of its evaluator community.

More information can be found on Red Five Lab website. The web demo is a good starting point if you are unfamiliar with the technology.

Watch a mobile Qt Everywhere video - Qt on three different mobile OS's

Watch Qt for S60 running on the Nokia 5800. Qt for S60 pre-release "Garden" is now based on Qt 4.5