Symbian has just issued the new document of Symbian Signed Test Criteria. It is marked as valid from December 1, 2007; but practically it won't be in force until the new Symbian Signed process is generally available (which is expected in early December 2007).

The new test criterias now are divided into two categories, i.e.:

• Universal tests (11 test cases), which focuses on install, uninstall, reliability, robustness and normal operational behavior. Most of the test cases come from the old ones. There are some old test cases that are merged into one.
  
• Capability-related tests (5 test cases), which include additional tests for applications that use certain specific capabilities only. All test cases in this category are new.

Here are some changes that I noticed in the new document.

• Backup/restore feature is not mandatory. The developer has an option of not supporting backup/restore.
  
• Auto-start feature. By default, an application shall not enable auto-start feature. There should be an option for the user to change it.
  

The following criterias have also been removed in the new document:

• PKG-03: File Creation Location.
• GEN-04: SIP session establishment.
• CON-03: Billable events. There is, however, similar test case for applications with NetworkControl and MultimediaDD.

 For more information, please visit Symbian Wiki page.

The blogosphere has been hot since yesterday about accelerometer on Nokia N95. Apparently, Nokia 95 has a built-in accelerometer. You can find discussion about this on:

• YouTube video showing RotateMe application on Nokia N95. It shows how to get an iPhone-like effect.
• Moving Ball example from Nokia Research Center. It shows a simple moving ball application that is controlled by accelerometer.

In the latest firmware, we can even get the raw data from the accelerometer using Sensor Plug-in for S60 3rd Edition. You can download the plug-in and start experimenting with accelerometer on Nokia N95

The usage of the API is very straightforward. You just need to create an instance of CRDAccelerometer and then receives the accelerometer data from its observer, MRDAccelerometerObserver. Note that the API still has "RD" prefix in the class name and file name; so it is still an R&D version.

Having access to accelerometer raw data gives us many possibilities. For example, we can use it as control for games. Arto Holopainen has shown similar idea; but he is using human muscle to control games.

As developers, the first question that you may have is, how to process raw data from the accelerometer. You need to know about "g" unit, which is a standard unit of acceleration. There are several papers that discuss "g" unit in accelerometer, for example:

• Accelerometer and How They Work - from Texas Instruments 
• Accelerometer Primer - from MEMSIC