Qt 5.5 Features: Many Exciting Improvements

Qt 5.5 is expected to ship in about two months and with this release will come a number of new and exciting features.

Qt 5.5 is in the process of being branched and an alpha release issued, prior to a beta in March, and the release candidate in April followed by the official Qt 5.5.0 release.

Among the highlights for Qt 5.5 are:

- Qt3D will be a tech preview feature of this next tool-kit update.

- The final release of the Bluetooth Low-Energy support in Qt Bluetooth (following a tech preview state in the previous release).

- GStreamer 1.0 support in Qt Multimedia though the default remains at GStreamer 0.10.

- A KMS/DRM back-end for EGLFS to replace Qt's KMS platform plug-in. This change will allow running apps with EGLFS on the console of the system with Mesa for graphics processors having a DRM/KMS driver.

- A libinput plug-in for Qt.

-A QtCanvas3D module has been added for a JavaScript 3D rendering API for Qt Quick.

- A tech preview of the new Qt Location module.

- A new video filtering framework in Qt Multimedia that can inctegrate compute APIs like OpenCL and CUDA or frameworks like OpenCV.

- Qt NFC has a Neard-based back-end for Linux.

- Various new APIs for the Qt WebEngine. The Qt WebEngine has also been updated against Chromium snapshot version 40.

The exhaustive list of Qt 5.5 features and changes is listed via this Wiki page, which is still being updated by the involved Qt 5.5 developers.