Help Do all Android phones support encryption?

[voodoochild16]

Hi all,
I am only curious about data encryption, like when your sending/receiving messages through email, sms or anything else. Is there an option on all android phones, or just the latest ones available today, to encrypt all of that?.

The only thing the iPhone has is data encryption, so a password is required to unlock the phone but that does not encrypt the wireless data, whch is all I am curious about for Android phones. So if the answer to my question is yes, I guess I would consider a Galaxy S6 as the phone of choice.

Thanks in advance!.

 

[chanchan05]

It depends on the method of sending the information used.
SMS obviously is not encrypted, whatever phone you used. The technology used for SMS does not support it.
Emails would be server dependent. If the server can't read encryption, obviously the recipient will just receive data encrypted on the phone and thus can't be read.
For chat messages, again, the server needs to be offering encrypted services to be able to handle encrypted chats in the first place.

 

[voodoochild16]

It depends on the method of sending the information used.
SMS obviously is not encrypted, whatever phone you used. The technology used for SMS does not support it.
Emails would be server dependent. If the server can't read encryption, obviously the recipient will just receive data encrypted on the phone and thus can't be read.
For chat messages, again, the server needs to be offering encrypted services to be able to handle encrypted chats in the first place.

Ok good to know but does the Android OS only have an encryption option for encrypting local data?. Before, I thought it was for communications like web browsing and email, but I'm now thinking it's only for local data which iOS supports automatically I think

 

[scary alien]

No, not all Android phones natively support in-place data encryption.

You are correct that many of the newer devices are the ones that do support it, especially the "flagship" devices that the manufactures want to also sell to businesses--a very important feature for them.

It's also interesting to note that devices like my Nexus 6P come with encryption already enabled.

edit: as others have indicated, there are certainly apps and processes you can add to encrypt moving / data-on-the-fly.

 

[rired48]

Can you spell 'TOR' ?

 

[svim]

Can you spell 'TOR' ?

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.torproject.android

Also, I use the Signal app as my default messaging app (aka Signal with iOS, used to be named TextSecure in Android). It has good encryption but your recipient also needs to be using Signal on their end, so in real life most of your texting is just plain old texting.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.thoughtcrime.securesms&hl=en
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signal_(software)