Symbian has announced the improved version of Symbian Signed, which was revealed at the Smartphone Show, has now launched. Symbian Signed now comes in three flavours: Open Signed (for developer testing), Express Signed (instant online signing for $20) and Certified Signed (broadly similar to the previous iteration). Express Signed significantly lowers the cost of signing for most application developers and should result in more applications being made available.

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Open Signed should make things easier for developers when testing applications as it raises the number of IMEIs that can be tied to one developer certificate. Currently the process is offline only, but an online version will be made available in due course.

Express Signed is likely to become the dominant method for signing applications in the future. It both lowers cost and reduces time to market. It makes it easier for developers to release niche application and, perhaps more importantly, make it cheaper to release small applications upgrades (e.g. a small bug fix, or an additional language variant). Express Signed does still require a Publisher ID.

Express Signed can be used for any application provided it does not use one of the sensitive capabilities (COMMDD, MULTIMEDIADD, NETWORKCONTROL, DISKADMIN, DRM, ALLFILES, TCB). The majority of applications (around 90%) do not use these capabilities.

Certified Signed will still be used by some applications (those which need to use the restricted capabilities mentioned above). It may also be required by some content distributors who want independent testing of applications.

Press release extract

Symbian Limited, developer and licensor of Symbian OS™, the market-leading operating system for advanced data-enabled mobile phones known as smartphones, today announced the general availability of a new and improved Symbian Signed service intended to make mobile development faster, easier, and cheaper for developers worldwide. The improved processes Open Signed, Express Signed and Certified Signed are available to developers with immediate effect.

Symbian Signed, developed in partnership between Symbian, its licensees, network operators and developers, promotes best practice to test and sign applications for Symbian smartphones. Based on developer feedback, the Symbian Signed processes have been radically improved to make signing faster, easier and cheaper for developers driving growth in the number of Symbian applications.

Bruce Carney, Director of Developer Programs and Services, Symbian said, “Developers are fundamental to our success and the industry’s. With over 20 million Symbian smartphones shipped during the third quarter of 2007 alone, we are more focused on providing smarter tools to make developing on Symbian OS speedier and more affordable. Among other evolutions, the new service allows developers to access previously restricted device capabilities giving developers more time to innovate.”

• Open Signed – provides a free offline signing process using Developer Certificates allowing an application to be installed and tested on up to 1000 devices controlled by declared IMEIs (unique phone identification numbers).
  
  
• Express Signed – an entirely new process to allow software developers with Publisher IDs to instantly sign all applications that do not require access to the more sensitive device functions, allowing faster time-to-market. Developers can now sign applications on Express Signed for as little as US$20.
  
  
• Certified Signed – for those applications that require access to restricted system capabilities and/or where independent testing is desired.

As part of the changes to accommodate the new signing processes a revised Symbian Signed Test Criteria (currently v3.0.1) for testing and signing applications has also been issued.