04 March 2008

Symbian Signed strikes back,
and fails us again, and ends with tears!

I guess that most of you will agree with me that Symbian signed service is terrible, even worse, for the past few weeks Symbian Signed was more or less dead and it caused a lot of problems for the developers as well as for the end users.

The situation was especially annoying for the owners of the new phones, as they weren’t able to create an account and to get the certificate for their brand new phones and sign some of the best, most useful freeware software applications that they need and want.

Today we finally got a solution for signing freeware soft but I am afraid that Open Signed is not as good as we have expected. It is not that helpful to the end users as it is mainly aimed to help the developers to test their software without a publisher ID. And also does not allow you to sign a SIS that is "owned" by someone else and hasn't been enabled for Open Signing; i.e. if a SIS uses a UID from the "Protected Range", the email address you use for Open Signed Online MUST match the email address of the account which owns/created the UID.

Open Signed is aimed to replace the Developer Certificate signing. It includes an online-only option that does not require the purchase of a Publisher ID, making it easy for developers to sign applications for limited deployment to known devices, either for testing or personal use. The option for uploading the SIS for certification is available as a beta this month, and it should go into full production early next year.

So, in short, the end users agony continues and there is no good news on the horizon and I just can’t believe this happen? Imagine the owner of the brand new phone that can’t get the freeware software to work because it’s impossible to get certificate and sign it. Shame on you Symbian and Nokia as well, I really thought that this down period will ends with a better and improved services but it is not the case, at least not for the end users.

The only good thing in all this, is the fact that this new service will be helpful for the developers of the freeware software, although it is not a perfect solution, not at all, it is good to see that symbian are trying to improve their services but I am afraid that they have failed this time!!!

Waiting for the next move, just hope that they didn’t forget that they have millions of the 3rd edition device owners that desperately need a solution for signing all the useful freeware unsigned software applications that is available!!!

I am not affected as I got certificate a long time ago and I am not going to change the my N95 classic that soon, I am completely disappointed with the last Nseries wave and I’ll wait for the next big thing, a phone with better screen because I am not going to strain my eyes with the crappy QVGA resolution anymore?

My friend Marty is also pissed off by the SS and he also has something to say about:

This new signing process only benefits the developer who can sign their application to work on their device, and/or a few of their friends devices also, as there is a limit to how many different IMEI you can sign to one domain email address.

All the unsigned freeware applications which is so readily available for download from many very talented developers out there, are now more or less completely useless to users who have new devices, it is completely terrible situation, as most of these very talented developers are just young uni or college students who simply cannot afford to purchase developer publisher ID, and can’t afford to get there application officially signed by Symbian, and release unsigned freeware versions of their application was the only way they can distribute their applications, and now with these changes they can’t, and unfortunately will inevitably result in them moving away from Symbian programming all together, which in my opinion is such a huge waste of great talent.