Tips for Preparing for Symbian Signed of Symbian 9 Mobile Applications

Every Symbian developer knows that the most of mobile applications for new Symbian devices have to go through the special certification, a Symbian Signing. For many small development companies this new initiative of Symbian has turned to a plaque and made the development of Symbian applications not interesting financially. Symbian market becomes to be dominated by companies, not single developers.

What does the Symbian Signing bring? There are some benefits and some drawbacks as always.
Beneficial is this mobile software certification system first of all for the consumer. Buying the certified applications the consumer can be sure that there is a certification authority that has tested the application, so it can not crash the system or include viruses.
The main drawback is felt by the developers. They have pay more, wait unpredicted time for the certification and have to fill out many papers to pass the Symbian Signing.

There are some general tips on how to pass the Symbian Signing in first round testing. These tips were gathered from the real company experience, so they also may help your company or team.

The preparing for Symbian Signing begins at the application planning. Please, make your application as simple as it is possible. Take away all steps that are not easy to test or that can cause questions. If it is hard to use and to test the application, you will for sure get questions from Symbian Signed teams.

During application installation, do not forget to place the announcements for the user that warn him about all exceptions that your application has (like application can not be installed on MMC). At the first start of the application you have to announce the user about all features of the phone the application is using, and tell the support mail for the case of questions. You have to place the warnings of the features use on every first feature usage, even if it sounds odd for you.

Be sure that your application not crashes and not closes unexpectedly, and has no obvious bugs that are really bugs, and can not be claimed as normal application behaviour. Bugs and crashing will for sure add one round to your testing.

Before Symbian Signed submission please make sure that you have run the last Symbian Signed tests on your application. Yes, it is time consuming, but it is worth it. Please note that for every test that you can not run you have to write exceptions with explanations – why this test can not be run or why you think that this test is not applicable to your application. It is also worth to make sure that you are using the last version of the tests, as they change often and without reason.

In your texts and explanations that you are submitting to the testing house you have to be as precise as possible. If you are sure that the error will occur, find a good reason for its occurring. But if you know that the error is small and very hard to find it is recommended that you just not mention it and hope for the best.

Symbian Signing is not so difficult as it may seem. If you are accurate enough and treat the process with humour you will soon be able to get the application accepted in the first round.