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Qt 5.5 equips developers with all the elements required to create connected devices and modern fluid applications with native C++ performance. It enables companies to future-proof their development, incorporating multi-screen and IoT options encompassing all major desktop, embedded and mobile operating systems.

The platform most notably introduces preliminary support for upcoming Windows 10 with full support to come with a subsequent Qt 5.5.x patch release after the final Windows 10 is released. With Qt 5.5, users can reuse existing Qt code to build and run on Windows 10. With a continued focus on desktop development, it also officially supports Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.6 and will include a pre-built version of Qt for this platform.

This latest release also includes features such as BLE for IoT deployments where it is now easy to write cross-platform code for communicating with smart sensors, wearables and other BLE-enabled peripherals. In addition, a new version of the integrated development environment, Qt Creator 3.4, enables more code and design productivity than ever before.

As users become accustomed to ever more sophisticated interfaces, the possibilities of and opportunities to incorporate, 3D graphics are increasing. Qt 5.5 includes two new modules to make the use of 3D elements quicker and easier. Qt Canvas 3D provides a WebGL-like API that can be easily implemented using the Qt Quick UI tool to make loading and displaying 3D content a trivial task. The Qt 3D 2.0 module, which is included as a technology preview, provides both C++ and QML APIs to simplify the integration of 3D content with Qt applications.

The handling of real-time camera feeds and video processing is enhanced, benefiting applications involving machine vision and image processing. The Qt Multimedia module has a number of improvements including a new video filtering feature that allows the integration of frameworks such as OpenCL and CUDA with VideoOutput elements. On Linux platforms, gstreamer 1.0 is now used as a default backend. Qt Quick Controls has seen its underlying QML engine significantly enhanced and a TreeView control has been added to complete the set of controls required for building desktop applications.

Qt 5.5 introduces a Qt Location module as a technology preview, adding mapping, geocoding, routing and places support. In conjunction with the existing Qt Positioning API, Qt Location provides everything needed to create location-aware applications. It can make use of a variety of map data providers including Nokia Here, Mapbox and Openstreetmap.

With Qt 5.5, Qt WebEngine, the cross-platform browser engine based on the Google Chrome open source project, has been updated to Chromium version 40. A number of new APIs have been added for managing downloading of files, controlling cache, cookies and settings.