Sunday, July 27, 2014

Dropbox Qt problems on Symbian

Hello there,

*Update: FilesPlus got update with a fixed version, you can get it via AppList or meeki.mobi/download

you may have noticed that some Symbian apps like cuteBox, Dropian or FilesPlus can't login into Dropbox anymore.
I recently read multiple reports about this on Delight Blog, Symbian Forums or via Email. Most of them claimed a bug on Delight side, but that's not true:

Some users tested it on original firmware or other custom firmware like The One by Daniel or Mohican by Xeon, all have the same issues, the problem can be a:

a) reboot directly without of a usual shutdown (like a system application crash or stack overflow)
b) like a) but with a reboot loop
c) simple app crash
d) full freeze of the phone

if you try to login with your Dropbox account inside of the apps. Thanks to the testers (like Allstar Software, Ade and Adan from Symbian FTW and Matthew from the comments below) for these information! The mentioned applications are QtQuick based GUI apps which use QtWebKit to show the login page, so the issue must be there.
A reboot can mean a stack overflow, but we don't really know what's the problem without of debugging an own Qt build what's not possible on Symbian. It's not related to JavaScript because it happens even with disabled JavaScript, so it seems to be related to the HTML code.

My guess about this: It seems like it's a QtWebKit bug which was unknown before and recent updates on Dropbox's login page uncoverd it. It affects Symbian Belle Refresh and FP2 and Anna for sure, maybe also s60v5, could somebody check that?

To test your device open this link: https://www.dropbox.com/1/oauth/authorize?oauth_token=sf0AFWhTDbJHtmnU&oauth_callback=&display=mobile (the Dropbox login link of the free app FilesPlus) in a Qt based browser like Star Browser, it will load a bit and than reboot your device. The default Nokia browser or Opera Mobile will show the usual login page without of any issues.

We can hope that Nokia/Microsoft Mobile will bring an update for us, but I doubt that.
Updating Symbian Belle Refresh and FP2 to the latest Qt (Core, GUI, Mobility, Quick, WebKit etc.) versions would require a firmware update -> which means a lot of work -> which means coasts and they probably don't want to spend much money on Symbian. We can see that because they killed the Nokia Internet Radio server, and running this one wasn't expensive for sure, or via the Gallery ShareUI services, which are broken (most of them) and there's still no fix.
Sadly we can't try to compile the latest 4.8.6 for Symbian, because that would require a paid compiler and Symbian Belle PDK, which isn't public.


I only can tell you that the support from our side is still there and that the Delight isn't dead yet. Symbian is still the only mobile phone OS I am using and that won't change in the next weeks, and even after that I don't plan to leave the scene. Updates for the 808 and N8 will come for sure and Eric will care about the other devices and translation in his free time.

Regards,
Fabian (huellif)