SysOpen Digia Plc announced today that Symbian Limited has selected SysOpen Digia's technology for enabling automated pre-testing of applications against the Symbian Signed Test Criteria. Under the agreement, SysOpen Digia will provide a testing solution using their Quality Kit product family which enables the Symbian developer community to verify that their application has reached industry-agreed quality requirements prior being submitted to be Symbian Signed with an independent test house.

Seppo Laaksonen, Senior Vice President, SysOpen Digia Plc says: "As Symbian Signed is an industry standard program endorsed by major companies, we are proud to provide our technology to this program. This is a milestone for the smartphone software industry and for SysOpen Digia testing tools and technologies. The entire Symbian ecosystem can now have access to a robust testing tool, which will make it easier and faster for developers to test their applications to the required Symbian Signed standard."

Bruce Carney, Head of Developer Marketing & Services, Symbian Ltd says: "We are working closely with SysOpen Digia and our licensees to refine the Symbian Signed process for our developers. Since Symbian Signed was launched over a year ago, Symbian has worked with the industry to drive test costs down by 75%. This free automated testing tool, AppTest Lite, will further support Symbian developers through the Symbian Signed process by keeping costs low and assuring the quality of the many innovative Symbian OS applications in the marketplace"

With this agreement, Symbian Signed delivers a solution that provides the entire industry with common guidelines and quality criteria for developing and commercialising Symbian OS smartphone applications. An easy to use testing solution will verify whenever an application has reached industry level quality criteria. The overall objective of Symbian Signed is to ensure that the industry will meet end-user expectations by providing reliable and robust applications for their smartphones.

The solution will automate the test requirements set by the Symbian Signed Program (test criteria are available in English from: https://www.symbiansigned.com/app/p...).

The solution is expected to be available in late Q3 and will be downloaded from the Symbian Signed site and is free of charge. It will also be demonstrated at The Smartphone Show. The testing solution will support Series 60 and UIQ-based smartphones.