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Anti-Virus Pro

Posted Sunday, May 1st, 2011 at 8:00 am by Toni McQuilken 0 Comments

User Rating4.00/5

Anti-Virus Pro protects Android devices from malware, viruses and spam SMS. The world’s most comprehensive security software is now available for Android™. Keep your device safe with just one click. Download Anti-virus Pro today and: Scan apps, settings, files, and media in real time. Find your lost or stolen phone and locate it on a map. Back up and restore all your valuable apps and data. Eliminate tasks that slow your phone down. Ensures emails, contacts, bookmarks and text messages are safe. Checks media files for vulnerabilities. Run daily, weekly, or on demand. Lock or Wipe your phone remotely via SMS or our Mobile. Control Panel feature. Set a lock screen message to help the locator find you.

Price: Free, $9.99

AndroidTapp.com Android App Review:

Pros & Cons:

Pros

• A quick way to check for suspicious apps, media, even SMS messages
• Auto-scanning of all new apps, as well as updates, for malware
• No noticeable lag or performance issues

Cons

• After you choose to Ignore or Fix an item in one category, it starts scanning again instead of letting you fix everything first, then choose to re-scan

Anti-Virus Pro protects your phone from viruses, malware & exploits in real-time. Free Antivirus from AVG Mobilation – security software for Android . Keep your device safe with just one click.

Features:

With malware making it’s debut on the Android platform in a major way not too long ago, apps to catch intrusions before they become a problem are big. This one, from the well-known free anti-virus software for computers, AVG, is actually a fantastic example of what an anti-virus on a phone should do.

I’ve been running it for about a week now, and I install and uninstall apps on a regular basis, so it’s safe to say I put AVG through it’s paces. One thing I was worried about was that it would slow down my system. The reality is that I haven’t noticed any difference in performance whatsoever. I small icon pops up in my notification bar when I install something to let me know it’s being scanned, and then if it’s safe, it just goes away. Half the time, I don’t even notice it’s working unless I actually look for it, that’s how fast it is.

When running the app itself, you can do a more comprehensive scan of your system, including not only apps you already have installed, but things like SMS and MMS messages. It actually flagged an SMS I had as “suspicious” because it was an activation text I hadn’t gotten around to deleting yet, so I was pretty impressed. My only complaint with that end of things was that when it finds something, it automatically brings you to the page to fix it, and when you either fix or ignore a problem, it automatically starts scanning again. I’d like an option to let it scan once, then let me fix everything at once and be done. But since you won’t need to run regular full phone scans if you already have AVG running in the background, it was a minor issue.

In the settings, you have the option to disable the real-time scanner if you happen to notice any performance hits on your particular model, as well as set such parameters as update frequency and whether or not you want it to scan text messages as well as apps.

At the risk of sounding like a bad infomercial, but wait, there’s more! In the tools section of the menu in the app, there is a wealth of system tools beyond just scanning. My personal favorite is the task killer. It brings up a list of everything running and it’s a one-tap process to stop anything you want to kill. Quick, easy and efficient. Other tools include beta or trial versions of tools like App Locker to password protect certain apps, as well as tools to allow you to both backup and wipe the data on the phone.

Another very neat feature is the Remote Management section. Here, you can register your phone (it’s another one-touch process, no additional registration needed. It automatically fills in the email address to register it to as the primary Google account on the phone, but you can change this if you’d like and from there, you can create a lock screen message, or track the phone if it gets lost. Once you register, you’ll get an email at the address you used with the link to the Mobile Control page online. Log in with the same Google account, and from there you’ll gt a Google map with the last known location of the phone. You can mark it as lost, which will prompt the phone to send back it’s current location, mark it as found, lock it down so no one can use it,  remotely wipe the data, disable the phone’s ability to roam, and the message you’d like to show up on the lock page if you do remotely lock it down. In the remote management section of the phone, you can also sync your apps, for remote management on the site.

Usefulness:

Extremely useful. Not only does it act as an anti-virus, but it’s packed with additional features for managing your phone while it’s in your possession or if it gets lost or stolen.

Ease of Use:

It doesn’t get much easier. Unless you need to use the lost or stolen features, you can set it up once and then leave it alone.

Frequently Used:

If you use the real-time scanning, it will be used with every app installation and/or incoming text or MMS message.

Interface:

The interface is dead-simple. The main screen is a touch-to-scan page, and hitting your menu button brings up the additional settings, which are well-marked and easy to figure out.

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