One of the hottest topics within the S60 Community, both here at Symbian-Guru and in other communities around the web is that of signed and unsigned applications. If you’re an S60 user, chances are, you’ve come across some great application, designed by a great independent developer, only to be frustrated to discover that the application is only available unsigned. There are two ways to these applications – either ‘hack’ your phone to remove the ‘signed’ restriction, or get a certificate for your phone and sign the application yourself.
We won’t cover the ‘hacking’ procedures here on the front page, though we have a section of our Forum specifically for this type of conversation. We don’t recommend you go this route, nor do we offer any type of support, should you mess up your phone. However, you’re free to discuss it on the Forum, and there are several members there who have been helping out.
Our recommendation is that you simply get a certificate for your phone, and sign each application individually. This will maintain the security that Symbian Signed allows, while still allowing you to make the ultimate decision about what gets installed on your phone. It is important that you know and trust the source of any application that you install to your phone.
OPDA.cn is regarded as one of the best places to get a certificate for your phone, and they have recently revamped their site to make it easier for English-speaking Symbian fans to navigate. You can now click here to get to OPDA’s English section, where you can easily request a certificate and then view your available certificates for download. Even better, they’ve also added the ability for you to upload an application to their servers and have it signed for your phone, and then re-download the signed version. All files are maintained on their server for you, so that you can re-download them later with ease. Here’s a visual of how this works:
To request your certificates, you’ll need to register for an account here. Once that’s done, you’ll need to click the big ‘Apply Cer’ button to submit your certificate request, using the form seen below. The fields are clearly labeled, which is nice. You can also add a custom nickname to each certificate, which makes it easier to keep track of multiple phones.
Once you have submitted the request, you can click here to view your available certificates, as well as to get the status of your pending requests, as seen below. You can see that I have received 4 certificates, and have one pending. Unfortunately, there is no notification options for when your certificate is ready, so you will need to check back every few hours.
Then, to use your .cer and .key files to sign applications, you can use SignSis, which offers an easy graphical interface, seen below:
Please note: Since the certificate is tied to your IMEI, you’ll need a new one anytime you get a new phone.
OPDA.cn has also added an English section to their forum, so that you can get involved in the community easily.
We’ll begin periodically covering unsigned applications here on Symbian-Guru.com from the various independent developers in the S60 Community. We invite you to bookmark this walkthrough to help you sign your applications. One of our favorite independent developers is TongRen, whose apps, such as FlipSilent and ShakeSMS, you can find here.
If you don’t wish to sign applications, you can still download and install any application from the Symbian-Guru Store, without having to bother with signing it first. Please assume that any application mentioned on Symbian-Guru.com is signed, unless otherwise specified. It’s entirely possible to use your S60-powered smartphone to its full potential, with lots of applications, without having to sign anything. However, we think it’s important to support the independent developers, as well as the ‘big guys’, and Symbian Signed has not made it easy for these independent folks to get their stuff signed.
8-11-09 – Post was updated to reflect OPDA’s new English-language site.
