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Antivirus for Android

F

fa1988

Newbie
Hi guys.
I've bought new Android phone, Huawei Ascend G525 that comes with Android 4.1.2.
My last phone was Huawei ascend Y300 that bricked due to installing swapper2 APP and I threw it to the recycle bin. After that grim experience I decided to not install any APP in my new phone even from Google Play.
I want to use it just for calling, watching photos and movies which stored in SD CARD via cable connection and in some rare cases to use Wi-Fi just for weather prediction and visiting web pages.
I won't root it too.
My question is that whether I need installing any Antivirus APP by considering these circumtances???:confused:
I've bought my new phone 3 days ago.
Please take part in this thread.
Thank you everyone.;)
 
A. I doubt your phone was bricked from installing an app.

B. Avast is a great antivirus and anti theft app.

C. If it bricks your phone you did somthing realy odd and wrong.

D. I would have antivirus.

E. Google play is a good app resource.
 
+1 to what funky said above.

My bits now

1) an app from Google play couldn't have bricked you, my bet is something just went horribly wrong with your former device. GP regularly scans their apps for viruses, malware etc

2) the only reason you should have an anti-virus is to take advantage of its lost device feature. Otherwise having an anti-virus app is just a waste of space.

Cheers
 
Yeah, as the Dragon says, anti-theft apps can be really useful and a lot of the time that function is built into "anti virus" apps like Lookout.
But in my opinion and probably most serious android users', there is no such thing as an android virus, you just have to be careful about what you knowingly install.
Im a really relaxed type of person and i dont worry about threats on android but i think even the most paranoid/careful people would agree that android is safe as houses.
Can you explain more about what happened on your last phone?
We love a puzzle :)
 
Probably the only thing you could be worried about when installing apps is if you side load apps.

From that you could get an app filled with malware, but a virus no.

Even then, if you choose to do that you should be very careful where you get it.

Obviously we'll advise you never to side load apps for that reason.
 
Thats why I has. I side load alot and only glance over decompiled apks before so.

U also get alot of false positives with root tools and some not so golden boy apps to frendly mess with people on your network. Like make web pages upside down.

Android apps are apk files, which are zip files. Which run sandboxed.

However, I am cautious and would use antivirus anyways.

And yes you should not fear to use your device. I never met a brick I couldent un. And 2 years ago I knew about as much about android phones as I do about the higgs bosen partical [which is only that it exists] so I have faith that you can learn to fix any error in a device that would crop up in normal use. Just get on here and xda and read read read about your phone.

How to do this and that and try it out.

You can always get cwm recovery, make a backup. And no mater what happens, short of electrocuting your phone or taking it scuba diving. You just go to recovery and hit restore.
 
Yes, Of course. I'd rooted my phone pretty much a month ago. One day I installed swapper2 from Google Play and after that I connected my phone to laptop ant partitioned SD-CARD using phone cable. Then I turned the phone off and tried to turn it on but it didn't. I took the battery out and after some minuts put it back but it didn't work. and.... ohhh shit. the repairman said it has burnt
 
If something was really burnt then I'd be more worried about the USB cable having done it than an app.

You could burn a phone out, but it would be hard to do with an app. Overclocking and bypassing thermal protection could do it, but you'd need a badly-written kernel mod to achieve that, not an app.

Having said that, the Play Store comments on that app contain a number of people saying that it wiped their ROMs or otherwise rendered the device unusable, so I'd definitely avoid it (but swap on a phone is a bad idea anyway). But I suspect that the devices were recoverable if you know how - usually if you can get into the bootloader you can fix it, and these devices were able to power on or get into recovery.

If that was what happened to your phone though I suspect the repair person was wrong when they said it was burnt, or if it was burnt it wasn't the app. Given that others have had trouble with that app I suspect the former.

One thing that is clear : always read the reviews before installing an app - though this one is an extreme case!
 
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