Symbian Signed, mobile industry endorsed certification program that promotes best practice in designing applications to run on Symbian smartphones, just got better as Symbian announced a range of new initiatives to help developers bring Symbian applications to market faster. These initiatives include a fast-track certification process, a DevCert Request plug-in for Carbide.c++, automated test tools and a new Symbian Signed website.
The announcement comes in the wake of 12,300 signing instances since the creation of Symbian Signed and follows a strong wave of developers migrating applications to Symbian OS v9 where application signing has increased 68% from Q2 to Q3 in 2006.
Fast-Track signing
Developers wishing to Fast-Track the signing process can now take advantage of a premium service provided by NSTL which takes one day. This service costs €275 and is accessed from the Symbian Signed portal.
DevCert Request plug-in for Carbide.c++
The new DevCert Request plug-in is the first in a series of planned plug-ins for Carbide.c++ and enables a developer certificate to be requested from within a development environment. Until now additional software was required to generate this certificate, with the DevCert Request plug-in, the development process is streamlined, making it easier and faster to test applications on a smartphone.
Automated test tools – UIQ and S60
Two new tools, one for UIQ and one for S60, are now freely available from the Symbian Signed website which allow developers to pre-test their applications before submitting them for Symbian Signed testing. This pre-testing automates up to 80% of the Symbian Signed test criteria making it easier to pass the Symbian Signed testing process.
New Symbian Signed and Symbian Developer Network (Beta) websites
The Symbian Signed website has been re-launched with improved navigation and integration with other Symbian websites such as the Symbian OS library and the Symbian Developer Network website, which has also been re-launched. The new Symbian Developer Network features useful information including: documentation and SDKs for all levels of application development experience and competency, new community building properties such as a Wiki, Forums and a registered user database.