Let’s take a break from Android gotchas and do some mobile necrophilia, i.e. let’s talk about Symbian.

Recently I received an email from Nokians saying that they are testing Nokia Store content with new firmware update and my app won’t work after update. After few quick email exchanges we narrowed down the problem to screen orientation locking code I wrote about some time ago. It turns out that things can be done much simpler:

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Window {
    Rectangle {
        id: root
        anchors.fill: parent

        Component.onCompleted: {
            screen.allowedOrientations = Screen.Landscape
        }

        // more stuff
    }
}

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int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
    QScopedPointer<QApplication> app(createApplication(argc, argv));

    QmlApplicationViewer viewer;
    viewer.setMainQmlFile(QLatin1String("qml/nupagadi/GameArea.qml"));
    viewer.setOrientation(QmlApplicationViewer::ScreenOrientationLockLandscape);
    viewer.setResizeMode(QDeclarativeView::SizeRootObjectToView);
    viewer.showExpanded();

    return app->exec();
}

Less code, no need to comment it as a gotcha/workaround, and it’s supposedly futureproof.

I’m very positively surprised with Nokians’ approach, responsiveness and this whole experience. Of course I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t bitch a little bit, namely: why did I have this problem in the first place? I mean, locking the screen orientation is not a rocket science and should be well documented. It should, but unfortunately it’s not, like so many things about QML.