New Symbian Signed Test Criteria
There’s a new draft Symbian Signed Test Criteria document on developer.symbian.com that’s intended to be used with the new signing processes available later this year.
I have taken a quick look and there are a few changes..
-
The current CON-02 and CON-03 tests have been removed. These are related to privacy and billing information that currently has to be presented to the user. Apparently, there were so many waivers for these that they will be removed. The requirement to notify the user of billable events was always a contentious issue. For example, for network access, pre-Symbian 9.1, it was sufficient to have something along the lines of just an initial access point selection and it was considered the user would know they could possibly be billed. Confusingly, the current test mandates a check box to opt out of future notifications when no such S60 UI control exists. Even the workaround on the Wiki is wrong in that it shows opting out rather than opt-in by default. Finally, what with bundled SMS, data and phone calls, it’s all contentious what actually constitutes a billable event anyway. I say Symbian are wise to get rid of CON-03.
-
The Nokia specific auto start test will become part of the core Symbian Signed tests. I suspect not autostarting by default may cause some people waiver pain. As an aside, the wording of the new test ‘does not start automatically by default’ is likely to cause problems in that workarounds require that an application or launcher autostart even if settings are such that it should subsequently close rather than continue.
-
The low memory and low storage space tests now have curious clauses such as…
"If the application under test is running inside a Virtual Machine (including, but not necessarily limited to, OPL, Python, Flash Lite) then the application should not be responsible for memory failures caused by the Virtual Machine itself. As such, these applications are exempted from low memory testing and Symbian will work with the Virtual Machine vendors to ensure these environments behave appropriately."
I am not so sure this is a good idea. The whole idea of signing is to show that the application as a whole achieves a level of quality - whether or not it uses a runtime. Forcing VM based apps to pass these tests would force the runtime providers to tighten up their code.
Remember, the document and associated criteria are still draft and you can still have your say.