by Raymond Biggs

Qtopia Phone Edition 4 features the integration of Helix DNA Client: the industry standard digital media platform. Helix DNA Client is a highly stable and mature open source platform upon which many desktop and embedded media players have been built.

On the desktop, the Helix DNA Client is the underlying framework for the ubiquitous RealPlayer and Rhapsody music service. In the embedded space, the platform is used by some of the most popular mobile phone manufacturers as the foundation of their media players. To date, Helix DNA Client has shipped in over 80 million handsets.

A highly modular architecture and support for various plug-in types allows developers to easily extend the capabilities of Helix DNA Client. The platform already includes extensive codec support, optimized for embedded devices, featuring MP3, AAC/aacPlus, H.264, RealAudio and RealVideo, AMR-WB, AMR-WB+ and Windows Media. All formats can also be streamed over HTTP or RTSP. Support for JSR-135 and OpenMAX-IL is scheduled for the next major release.

The tri-license model of the Helix DNA Client gives ultimate flexibility to both commercial companies that want to deploy media players for the mass-market via the RCSL, as well as to open-source developers via the RPSL or the popular GPL license.

The Helix DNA Client is supported, maintained and sustained by the Helix Community: a vibrant community of over 120,000 developers and over 150 commercial entities. Contributors include the major entities of the mobile ecosystem such as Nokia, Motorola, Trolltech, Samsung, SonyEricsson, TI, Intel, ST Microelectronics, Novell, Red Hat and RealNetworks. Several independent developers are also active project owners and contributors in the Helix Community.

Qtopia Phone Edition 4.1 introduced the platform by providing an optional pre-integrated snapshot of the Helix DNA Client sources. The snapshot is fully integrated into the Qtopia build process and is transparent to the developer.

In addition the Qtopia Media abstraction was introduced allowing developers to access the media services provided by Helix DNA Client natively in Qtopia rather than speaking to Helix DNA Client directly.

Along with an all new Media Player, Qtopia Phone Edition 4.1 includes a set of multimedia widgets based on the Qtopia Media abstraction. The hope is to allow developers to create rich multimedia applications like the Qtopia Media Player simply by combining a few of these widgets.

Further expansion to the capabilities of the Helix DNA Client integration is intended for future releases of Qtopia. Beginning with Qtopia Phone Edition 4.2 the planned introduction of the Qtopia Media Server will allow applications throughout Qtopia to access the media services provided by Helix DNA Client. Using simple widgets developers will be able to easily embed audio and video into their own applications.

Together Qtopia Phone Edition 4 and Helix DNA Client provide a complete platform for next-generation multimedia-rich mobile phones and applications.