Majority of Android phones are not "junk" phones

[nj1266]

It bears repeating that market share does not mean much. It is profits that count. And in that arena it is Apple and Samsung that take all the profits.

Given the dominance of Apple and Samsung, why do fans insist on comparing pure Android to other platforms. For a huge majority of people Touchwiz IS Android. Ask any person in the street what their Samsung phone is running and they either would not know or they would tell you it is Android.

I have an S3 running 4.3 and an iPhone 5 running 7.0.4. The iPhone is jail broken to make it as flexible as the S3. The S3 is tweaked to make it faster. The iPhone is still smoother than the S3. I do enjoy both, but the iPhone's everyday drive ability is, without a doubt, better than the S3


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[xchange]

and for every Windows Phone one you can find (Without looking into the results) I can find 1000 applicable Android ones.

That would reflect how WP is doing on the market quite nicely. It's not a difficult feat to find far fewer articles for a product far fewer people desire to own. Congrats on being one of them? Way to capture mindshare Microsoft, bravo
/Golfclap

 

[xchange]

I saw it coming the minute z33 and Jeff showed up in the same thread. <3

True, but one of those two doesn't hang out on a daily basis on WP forums trying to convince everyone that android is better.

 

[z33dev33l]

True, but one of those two doesn't hang out on a daily basis on WP forums trying to convince everyone that android is better.

Neither is better than the other. One is more stable and secure, the other offers more functionality. Pretty simple.

 

[A895]

Neither is better than the other. One is more stable and secure, the other offers more functionality. Pretty simple.

Android is functionality and ecosystem wise is better than WP. It may be more stable across the board but that's it. Android and WP are both pretty secure platforms. It's just that people put on tin foil hats in regards to Google.

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[z33dev33l]

Android is functionality and ecosystem wise is better than WP. It may be more stable across the board but that's it. Android and WP are both pretty secure platforms. It's just that people put on tin foil hats in regards to Google.

Posted via Android Central App

Android really isn't a secure platform... It's literally the only one right now that gets malware and it's been directly dropped on the play store hundreds of times. That and from a business perspective it's simply not.

 

[A895]

Android really isn't a secure platform... It's literally the only one right now that gets malware and it's been directly dropped on the play store hundreds of times. That and from a business perspective it's simply not.

Hundreds of times? You have a source for that? Android is inherently secure, Android is like Windows, malware only happens due to user error.

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[z33dev33l]

Hundreds of times? You have a source for that? Android is inherently secure, Android is like Windows, malware only happens due to user error.

Posted via Android Central App

Hmm, looks like roughly 42,000 in 2013

 

[A895]

Hmm, looks like roughly 42,000 in 2013

No source then? Ok.

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[z33dev33l]

No source then? Ok.

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Sorry, guess the link didn't carry over.

Report: Malware-infected Android apps spike in the Google Play store | PCWorld

 

[Aquila]

Hmm, looks like roughly 42,000 in 2013

42,000 what? Separate apps that are malware that came from the Play Store? That'd be about 1 in every 25 apps.

According to this article: Android security chief breaks down real malware data | Android Central even on a sample of 1,000,000 apps that were sideloaded almost 99.9% of them were malware free.

According to this one: Contrary to what you’ve heard, Android is almost impenetrable to malware – Quartz "less than an estimated .001% of app installations are able to evade the system's multi-layered defenses and cause harm to users". It also referenced this PDF: http://info.publicintelligence.net/DHS-FBI-AndroidThreats.pdf?_ga=1.48394982.1155513325.1400949084 which states that 79% of Malware threats on mobile were on Android (makes sense, given the market share and global dominance and near monopoly in high cyber-crime parts of the world where some of the other OS's don't even exist) and that nearly half of all malicious applications get to the device via text message (sms) trojans.

Android is great at protecting you from malicious code. It is good at, but not perfect at protecting morons from themselves. If you're downloading shady stuff from shady places and disabling the functions of your device that protect you from malware, yeah your odds of catching something go up.

Edit to add:

Looking at the RiskIQ link, they're actually saying it's 1 in 8 apps from the Play Store are Malware. Aside from the obvious miss in math here... (42,000 x 8 is only representing about 1/3 of the Play Store in early 2013) ... We're buying that? Lets keep in mind that they don't have access to the actual data and that they sell security solutions.

But that aside, how would it be possible that 99.9% of sideloaded malware apps cannot get past Android's security and cause harm, but 12.7% of all apps in the Play Store are malware that can get past it with no problem. That would mean sideloaded apps are more secure than the Play Store.

Does that make sense to anyone as even a remote possibility? Keep in mind Play Store apps go through the exact same unpacker/installer and all steps that sideloaded apps go through in addition to being subject to the bouncer.

 

[A895]

Sorry, guess the link didn't carry over.

Report: Malware-infected Android apps spike in the Google Play store | PCWorld

Don't trust it. Never heard of these RiskIQ guys.

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[Aquila]

Don't trust it. Never heard of these RiskIQ guys.

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Solutions | RiskIQ.com

It's a tiny security company that has spent the last 13 months or so spamming tech blogs with big scary headlines. Their main target is enterprise security business, and CIOs tend to eat this kind of stuff up. More funding for the IT department? Yes please!

 

[xchange]

Hmm, looks like roughly 42,000 in 2013

I see you're still hesitant to backup with links but I'll do it for you. I believe you were likely quoting this article
BY 2013 by the way, not IN 2013.

However there are flaws in your argument as well as a large glaring hypocrisy. First let's look at the flaws. The company is an online security company, meaning they're selling themselves with these articles. Secondly most if not all of these claims are made by security for sale firms which claim that their findings used their own proprietary technology developed by them which they do not share with Google, or anyone else for that matter and are not confirmed by anyone else. As darth pointed out above, they don't even have access to the data. hey claim they scan Play Store when in fact they don't have the ability to do that legitimately. So it's total BS. What I found notable was that they only scanned Play Store and not Apple app store or WP's store. What? Also of note is that Apple Store has had a lot of malware detected recently as well which you'll discover using a simple Google Search

Now for the hypocrisy. Do you only use WP and not a PC or Mac? If not, I can't fathom why you would be so hung up about your phone security while continuing to use computers which have numbers of malware attacks that dwarf mobile OS platforms by orders of magnitude. It makes no sense. Furthermore, do the math. Hackers are much like app developers and carriers in one regard: They don't bother themselves with low usage products. Of course there are more attacks on Android and iOS. It will always be this way. You sitting there touting the superiority of WP security is ludicrous because if MS was so adept at security then why is not Windows Desktop OS not as secure? Because it's widely used. The minute WP climbed to 50% marketshare your security claims would go straight down the toilet. Not to mention the fact that WP does have reported incidents of its own. The small number of them reflects number of users more than the inherent security of the OS. If you're seriously considering telling me there's an OS out there that's rock solid against hackers once that OS goes mainstream, you either know absolutely nothing about hacking and exploits or you're in denial.

tl;dr version: ease up on the koolaid please.

Edit, thanks Darth, you posted as I was still typing. Excellent points

 

[Aquila]

I don't want to get overly bogged down in the details of who said what, but I think it's intuitive to think of WP being secure for the exact same reason that Linux is secure. Realistically, they have very similarly arrayed defenses. They're also "ghosttowns" compared to the giants in their respective worlds, where Android and Windows are the vast majority of enterprise devices (that's where the money is) and a platform that entry level consumers (like the morons who click links in unsolicited texts) flock to due to low costs and widespread almost ubiquitous adoption.

 

[A895]

I see you're still hesitant to backup with links but I'll do it for you. I believe you were likely quoting this article
BY 2013 by the way, not IN 2013.

However there are flaws in your argument as well as a large glaring hypocrisy. First let's look at the flaws. The company is an online security company, meaning they're selling themselves with these articles. Secondly most if not all of these claims are made by security for sale firms which claim that their findings used their own proprietary technology developed by them which they do not share with Google, or anyone else for that matter and are not confirmed by anyone else. As darth pointed out above, they don't even have access to the data. hey claim they scan Play Store when in fact they don't have the ability to do that legitimately. So it's total BS. What I found notable was that they only scanned Play Store and not Apple app store or WP's store. What? Also of note is that Apple Store has had a lot of malware detected recently as well which you'll discover using a simple Google Search

Now for the hypocrisy. Do you only use WP and not a PC or Mac? If not, I can't fathom why you would be so hung up about your phone security while continuing to use computers which have numbers of malware attacks that dwarf mobile OS platforms by orders of magnitude. It makes no sense. Furthermore, do the math. Hackers are much like app developers and carriers in one regard: They don't bother themselves with low usage products. Of course there are more attacks on Android and iOS. It will always be this way. You sitting there touting the superiority of WP security is ludicrous because if MS was so adept at security then why is not Windows Desktop OS not as secure? Because it's widely used. The minute WP climbed to 50% marketshare your security claims would go straight down the toilet. Not to mention the fact that WP does have reported incidents of its own. The small number of them reflects number of users more than the inherent security of the OS. If you're seriously considering telling me there's an OS out there that's rock solid against hackers once that OS goes mainstream, you either know absolutely nothing about hacking and exploits or you're in denial.

tl;dr version: ease up on the koolaid please.

Edit, thanks Darth, you posted as I was still typing. Excellent points

Perfectly said.

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[Aquila]

Edit, thanks Darth, you posted as I was still typing. Excellent points

I think it is important to keep in mind that as long time readers of Android related news that we are likely to be more familiar with both the actual processes than those who spend less time reading about, thinking about and using Android in its various incarnations - but more importantly that we're much more aware of the misinformation campaign on this particular subject because of the years of which it has been oft repeated in the iOS vs Android debates.

Just like in any other subject, due to the wide propagation of the untruths and the relatively small reach of the counter points (relative to the former), it is entirely possible and very likely to encounter people who have heard the former argument so often that it is accepted as truth and they may have never heard of the actual information involved. Most of them don't care to get into the details, and can take a headline at face value - especially given the similarities of content and framing and the repetitive nature of that messaging.

The exact same thing happens in regards to the quality and proliferation of Windows Phone apps - Android and iOS users can be used to the garbage apps from Windows Mobile and/or used to year or two old reports about how developers are ignoring the platform. If we don't reach out to question and then either verify or discard our assumptions, there's not really a point to having a discussion.

In any case, to return the main subject, all Android devices have similar security structures in place, more or less regardless of their pricepoint. Sure, older GB devices function slightly differently than ICS, JB & KK, but the concepts and relative effectiveness are the same. So while concerns about security may be a good argument for debating whether or not to purchase ANY Android device, I don't see it as really a factor in whether you would get a flagship or a budget device in today's market.

 

[pappy53]

I have mainly used Android devices since the original Droid, and have never had a single case of malware.

 

[Aquila]

I have mainly used Android devices since the original Droid, and have never had a single case of malware.

You're also probably not manually bypassing your security settings to download shady apps from shady places.

 

[pappy53]

You're also probably not manually bypassing your security settings to download shady apps from shady places.

No, I have always downloaded from the app store. I believe that Android is pretty secure, not as much as iOS but more than WP.