Avast! Mobile Security Review

Pros

Contains every security feature that you can wish for from virus scanner,anti-theft protection to firewalls. Tons of different features.

Cons

Takes some time to learn and setup the complete protection set of avast! antivirus.

Avast! is a truly reliable and trust able name from PC antivirus and had come up with a very powerful and free app to protect your android device. Avast Mobile Security with free antivirus for Android secures against unwanted phishing, malware, spyware, and malicious viruses such as Trojans and even against loss or theft. It's has a large variety of tools for anti theft protection to mobile backup and from app locking to firewall and SMS and call filter.
With more than 100 Million downloads its among the most popular antiviruses and surely contains some of the most advance options.

ANTIVIRUS AND MALWARE PROTECTION

If we talk about the antivirus and malware protection according to www.av-test.org the testing of avast! during there January 2015 evaluation shows the following results.

Detection of a representative set of malicious apps discovered in the last 4 weeks is a whooping 100% while the industry average is 99.3%.

On the performance side
1.The app does not impact the battery life
2.The app does not slow down the device during normal usage
3.The app does not generate too much traffic

It also has 0 false warnings during installation and usage of legitimate apps from Google play also from third party websites.

It actually provides us the app shield, web shield as well as SMS shield.

Upon installation it will scan all your apps and your data if you wants, I found the scan quick enough. It also has the option of file shield which will scan the files whenever you read or execute to give you a complete protection.

It includes this in totality right now, app shield, application locking, file shield, firewall, message shield, network meter, pin protection, privacy advisor, SMS and call filter, updates, virus scan , web shield.

App shield scan app on installation and on execution, web shield check for phishing sites, check for malicious sites, sites correction(fix spelling errors when you type an address to the browser address bar), file shield scan files when reading or execution and  message shield scan incoming messages.

Actually the avast mobile security is too rich in the functionality and the functionality is broken down into many different apps. Like a saperate app for anti theft, one for backup and so on. So the actual functionality might leave you in frustration but if you are patient enough to learn it, then it has a lot to offer you.

Anti theft and SMS Control

Theft is one of the main concerns for our android device, and I personally like the Anti Theft feature of Avast!. You are needed to download it from the Play store separately. It has the functionality to locate and track your phone, control your cell phone remotely, remote wipe, remotely take photos and listen to the audio of the phone surroundings, SIM card change notifications, stealth mode automatically hides the app on phone whenever anti theft is activated
premium features has geofencing remote identification in which if the device leaves a defined area the device will be marked lost, triggering all associated protection behaviors.

If sim card is changed or device is marked as locked it will lock the phone which can also could be done remotely by sending a LOST command to the phone, sound siren, deny access to settings so that AntiTheft can't be uninstalled. If Anti Theft rooted version is installed some additional features like preventing usb debugging access,forcing data connection to stay alive and protection from hard reset are added.

In the premium version you can take the picture of the person who incorrectly entered the Android locked-screen password more than 3 times.

Avast Anti Theft provides us with a wide range of SMS Commands some which are to lock and unlock the phone , to mark the phone as lost and found,to allow us to display a message on the phone after it has been locked which is also referred to as lock text, to activate or deactivate the siren, to locate the phone ,  to wipe the phone , activate and deactivate the data connection , you can also get the last 10 received SMS messages,contacts, call logs,reboot, app lock mode and much more.

App Locking

App locking is also provided as an part of the feature set of Avast! mobile security, you can lock your personal apps for security reasons, and if you are currently using app lock like some app then you can guess now you have a three layer security, first the default android locks and then the app lock and Avast!.

Mobile Backup

We know that with our android device our most important assets is our data. We can download Avast! Mobile Backup & Restore for our data back up. It backs up the contacts, music, video, family photos and other personal data on a secure cloud based server so you can relax about theft and accidental damage.
Contacts, SMS ,call logs and photos backup is available in the basic version but for the premium it also backs up your music, videos,and apps. It has a plenty of settings for whenever you want to back up.
Contacts and SMS call logs are backed up to your personal avast account.
Photos are backed up on Google drive due to data size, so you need Google account for mobile backup use.

There are some other small additional features also which could be worth mentioning

SMS and Call Filter

you can create groups and block SMS and calls or both and also outgoing calls you can also be  blocked depending upon the day of the week and can also block for a specific time.

Firewall.

This only works for rooted devices.

Network Meter

It shows you about how much data some app is using,it also includes low level system traffic which is not associated with the apps.

Privacy Advisor and App Manager: Personally I think these are just average with no specific additional functionality.

To conclude it, Avast! Mobile Security is a great app for your android security and we suggest it to everyone.