Android App Review – AVG Antivirus Free

So word on the street (and when I say street, I mean the good old information super-highway) is that viruses and malware are becoming quite a big threat for Android users, but that is a story for another post. I want to have a chat about one app that can help you can combat it! Cue AVG!

AVG are already well known for the free anti-virus they provide for the PC. Will this be as popular...?

Lots of people will be familiar with the name ‘AVG’ when it comes to anti-virus software. Their free application for the PC is widely regarded as a solid choice to protect your PC. It comes as no surprise that they have come up with a similar application to help protect Android phones, however this App has a few tricks up it’s sleeve making it more than just a simple ‘virus cleaner’.

As you can see from these screenshots taken from my trusty Hero, scanning your phone is a piece of cake. Click the big tablet and make your phone feel all better! It will scan through your Apps, phone content, media (not sure why that isn’t just classed as content) and check out all your settings. As you can see I have some settings that the application class as unsafe, but I was expecting that. The app flagged up the USB Debugging Mode, Installing Software from an untrusted source and having the device running in a ‘High Privilege’ (rooted) mode. Once it’s done it’s thing you can then ask it to hide warnings if you are happy to live with those issues, which is what I did for the settings. Of course this is usually where an anti-virus program stops, it’s made sure that the device it is running on is clean of viruses and malware and is happy. This little app though has a few tricks up it’s sleeve that set it apart from the rest!

The extra tools here are quite handy, for example the task killer means I don’t have to have a separate app for it! Saving a little bit of space on my device. I want to talk about a couple of these other tools in a bit more detail.

App Locker

I wondered for a while what this could be. Once set up you can select what apps you’d like to keep in the locker, password protected. After that, every time you try to access the apps in there you have to put in your password. Quite a handy way to password protect things like your messages and keep all your different girlfriends/boyfriends a secret from each other. :-p

Tuneup

This tool has a couple of screens to it. One is a detailed breakdown of your battery use, the other is an alternative way of uninstalling apps. When I saw this tool I was hoping for a bit more, maybe a way to speed the device up without having to root it and play with different CPU settings and JIT compilers.

The rest of the tools there are pretty self explanatory, which leaves the ‘Remote Management’. This is a tool a little more suited to a phone but has little to do with beating off viruses, more to do with tracking a stolen phone. Once signed up you get an email with a link to the web interface. On there you can make the phone shout, locate it, lock it, unlock it, wipe it, scan it and remove the device. That final one being there of course so you can manage several devices from the same email address. I played with the service a little, only ever inside though so accuracy isn’t something I have been able to test. I don’t doubt it works though, GPS is GPS. The locking and unlocking was very rapid, no issues there.

Overall this is a great app, does the anti-virus thing very well and all the extra features are a welcome bonus! AVG clearly did their research so this is something I’d recommend downloading. You can find the app for free on the marketplace with a paid version in tow, even a separate tablet version! One thing I really like is a trial version of the full app available too, gives you 30 days of the full ‘Pro’ experience. AVG actually offer quite a few different apps so thats where the link will take you, you can make your own choices as to which one you want to download.

Android Market – AVG Mobilation