Symbian Signed and Software Bug Fix
Development July 21st. 2006, 11:45amWhen do you usually release software bug fix? As a freelance developer, I don’t have a “defined process”. Usually I just release bug fix as soon as possible. If someone reports a bug today, I may have released a bug fix in the next day.
That is what I used to do with my application, Screenshot for Symbian OS. Unfortunately, I cannot do that any longer. Why? My application has to go through Symbian Signed? since Symbian released Symbian OS 9. It has to be signed otherwise it cannot be installed on the user’s phone. The signing process itself takes about 2-3 weeks because my application is freeware. Well, I can pay a few hundred bucks to get my application signed within 24 hours. But that is simply too expensive for me.
Now, each time I want to release a bug fix, I have to wait for 2-3 weeks. Sometimes, it happens that I am ready to release the next bug fix release, but my previous release has not been signed yet. Well, Symbian Signed service is free of charge anyway, so we cannot expect too much.
I don’t know how the experience of other freeware and open source developers. There are some freeware for Symbian OS 9 out there, but many of them don’t require Symbian Signed service. For my case, I do need Symbian Signed because my application access one of the “protected” functions on the phone.
Any thought?
9 Responses to “Symbian Signed and Software Bug Fix”
Comments are disabled.
July 24th, 2006 at 2:57 am
How to release bug fixes, if the app is Symbian Signed?
Sirul asked me to comment the problem published on Antony’s Mobile Blog: Symbian Signed and Software Bug Fix. In short, the problem is this. Some applications require Symbian Signed service, since they use the “protected” functions of the device….
July 24th, 2006 at 10:39 am
More PlatSec stuff: SW patches & Symbian Signed
Antony Pranata raises a good point about the requirement to re-certify an app via Symbian Signed if a bug fix is applied. Apparently, the Freeware process takes quite a while (although paying for an update speeds it up considerably, from 3 weeks to 24h…
July 29th, 2006 at 2:09 pm
Platform Security — Certificate manager mockup
PlatSec is a nice platform feature, but a pain for developers. Although we can’t make the pain go away, we set out to draft a plan for how we could ease the pain at least a little bit.
July 29th, 2006 at 2:21 pm
Ciao
what about self signing your application?
Alessandro
July 29th, 2006 at 2:29 pm
Self signed application is not affected at all.
The issue that I raised here is only for Symbian Signed program.
September 27th, 2006 at 11:13 am
Well, at the moment it seems to me that Symbian Signed
concept is some kind of way to control the software business
industry from phone manufacturer’s point of view.
It seems to me that phone manufacturers want to select
the best sw companies on their own business purposes.
Just remember what happened when MS released sw tools
for every one who wanted to start commercial business
with their own brains -> a lot of sw industry was founded.
So, my opinion is that phone manufacturers want to
take their own piece as money from future mobile sw business
developers and companies.
September 27th, 2006 at 12:03 pm
@turnabull: I fully agree with you. It seems phone manufactures really want to have big and best software companies to develop for this platform.
It is still debatable though whether this is the right decision or not.
September 27th, 2006 at 12:24 pm
[…] I have fixed the problem and tested on E61. You can expect to see the new release within 2 - 3 weeks. Why does it take so long to release the fix? You many know it is because of Symbian Signed program. Read also my post about Symbian Signed and Software Bug Fix. […]
September 27th, 2006 at 12:24 pm
Yes, for all telephone users in their normal life,
the best thing is that they can use devices without
the fear of viruses. So, at the moment with Symbian C++
applications is that application development is controlled
and canditate application will be “checked” by
the official authority.
Let’s see what is going to happen with other development areas like J2ME.