Angry rant on the Qt Smart Installer for Symbian

rahulgarg

(Note: I have posted this on a few other forums as well on other sites. So if you have already read it, sorry for the double post.)

Just an angry rant at the Qt Smart Installer on Symbian. I have tried installing various Qt apps from Ovi Store on N8: Wordpress, Slacker, CNN, Poynt and so on. And all of them are very nice apps.But installation of each of those apps had severe problems. First the installer would hang up for about 5 minutes where you wouldn't know whats going on. Then, the device would restart and you would not know what happened. If you went into applications, you would find a "smart installer" app. If you didn't know about the smart installer, you would be very confused. If you clicked the smart installer, it sometimes (if you are lucky) continue with the installation of the app and install it.

All this with no word of warning to the user during the entire process.

As a Qt developer, that does not make me very happy. Customers are going to be angry with me, not at Nokia, and they have every right to be angry. This is readily apparent on many negative reviews on the mentioned apps as well.

Qt Team: Fix it. I dont care how great Qt is if the installation of apps is such a disaster. I can see where Elop was coming from, at least from the POV of Symbian whose success was very important for the Qt ecosystem.

kkrzewniak

I've never encountered such problems when using smart installer, but I might just be lucky (I usually am).
Could you confirm this behavior on other devices and have you considered filing a bug report. Posting rants here won't really help.

rahulgarg

I have personally experienced this on an X6 (though not as bad, just hung installs). Some reviews on the Ovi Store indicate that at least some other folks have experienced similar issues.
You are correct though. I will post a bug report about this.

unni

I can confirm this 100%. I experienced this a lot in my C7. I can't say for sure under what scenario it happens.

Sometimes, as pointed above, the installation will start, and then fail.
Sometimes, installation progress bar will keep on updating for several minutes, and then the device will restart. I will get the SmartInstaller icon inside Applications menu. When I click on it, sometimes the installation will start, sometimes nothing will happen, sometimes I get a popup to start the installation again (I forgot the exact message).

I think this usually happens if I install multiple Qt apps from Ovi Store simulataneously. ie, while one app is getting downloaded from store, I start the installation of another one, and so on. Nowadays, I install only one at a time. So, I haven't faced this issue after the last master reset.