Cell Phone Security??

The best antivirus for Android is iPhone.

I tried Lookout. Ate my battery life.

AV is going to do little or nothing, and wastes CPU, storage, and memory on an Android phone. I would recommend Lookout, but because it gives functionality like being able to remotely wipe the device if it is stolen, as well as another mechanism for locating the phone if lost.

DD716TED wrote:
Is an Anti-Virus app necessary on a cell phone... I know they exist but (1) are they necessary and if so which one is the best? My last phone (HTC One) came with one installed but my new Samsung S7 doesn't have one that I am aware of...

As with my S6 I believe you will find that your S7 comes with Samsung Knox built-in and also the partner App Lookout Anti-Virus. You might want to take a look at that.

Dave

bwanshoom wrote:
A cell phone AV program runs with the same permissions as any other program and is sand-boxed from doing very much. Normally an AV product runs with elevated permissions and basically as part of the OS. On cell phones, that's not the case so they don't do much more than check that your apps are not on any blacklist.

They might provide some small measure of benefit, but they are very, very different from their PC cousins. Just because it comes from a known name doesn't mean it's very thorough. I wouldn't really bother.

I mostly agree with this, but consider using Sophos. It's free and has a built in Web filter which can block known malicious sites and phishing attacks. It's better than going in the water "naked".

A cell phone AV program runs with the same permissions as any other program and is sand-boxed from doing very much. Normally an AV product runs with elevated permissions and basically as part of the OS. On cell phones, that's not the case so they don't do much more than check that your apps are not on any blacklist.

They might provide some small measure of benefit, but they are very, very different from their PC cousins. Just because it comes from a known name doesn't mean it's very thorough. I wouldn't really bother.

Android devices are subject to more and more exploits every day, the best protection is not falling for phishing scams but there are several anti-virus / security solutions for Android OS. I don't run Android but I've had good luck AVG Free on other OS's and it is one of the top rated products available.

AVG Free for Android