Is it possible to run q Qt Symbian application in the background and interact with the homescreen?

Question

I'm writing a Symbian application using Qt for Symbian that is supposed to run on S60 3rd edition FP1, FP2 and 5th edition phones.

In my application, I will need to implement push notification functionality that will notify the user of changes on the server. Basically, it is a pending tasks application. When a new task is assigned to the user, he should be notified.

Ideally, the user will start the application and somehow, send it to the background so that it will continue to wait for push notifications (which is another question, but I will have to search a bit first!).

When a push notification comes, ideally, a notification is displayed on the homescreen of the user, much like indicating up coming calendar appointments. If this is not possible, then a popup notification from the application might do.

The question is, is such kind of functionality possible with Qt for Symbian alone? If not, can somebody direct me in the right direction? So far I've only found the Homescreen Publishing API but this is for Series 60 5th edition phones only.

Thanks!

Answer 1

For 3rd edition phones there is no published way to add to the homescreen. I've seen comments that there is a API but there is no documentation and it only works in you are in ROM so it's not usable.

You can add a overlay window to the homescreen. Here is an example from nokia.

I haven't done any 5th edition work yet so I don't know.