Symantec is one of the biggest names in digital security, and with the company's Norton Mobile Security Android app, it brings that excellent pedigree to mobile devices as well. Norton does an excellent job scanning and protecting against malicious apps, but it also has strong anti-theft features, excellent phishing protection, and a smart app advisor that warns you about suspicious apps before you download them. For all of this, it earns our Editors' Choice for paid Android antivirus apps.
Pricing and Design
Symantec Norton Security and Antivirus is available as a free download from the Google Play store. The free version provides basic protection, but you'll want to upgrade to the Premium version, which is what I tested for this review, on a Google Nexus 6. The Premium version costs $19.95 per year and comes with a generous ten licenses to use across Android and iOS devices. That's a great deal. Users who opt for the Premium upgrade get access to contact backups, Web protection, call blocking, and an App Advisor tool.
While Norton packs excellent antivirus protection and features, its design is very simple. A central pane gives you quick access to every feature. You can also swipe between each feature's page to move forward and backward, which makes navigation easy.
Antivirus Protection
Unlike most other security apps, Norton hides the antivirus scan button in the overflow menu. Once you've completed a scan, it won't let you pointlessly launch another scan until a few seconds later. But that doesn't affect your protection; the app automatically performs a scan when it starts up the first time, and then scans every app that's installed on the device.
On the rare occasions that you need to perform a device scan, or when a scheduled scan pops up, it takes an average of 9.8 seconds. If you opt to include the SD card in your scans, it takes only sightly longer; an average of 10.4 seconds. That's much quicker than the last time I reviewed the app, but still not as fast as Bitdefender Mobile Security and Antivirus, which can scan a phone in 6 seconds.
To test Norton's antivirus detection, I downloaded the EICAR app from Google Play. This application is completely safe but is designed to be detected as malicious for evaluation purposes. Norton flagged the app immediately upon installation and prompted me to delete the app.
At PCMag, we don't benchmark malware detection rates for Android security apps. Instead, we rely on independent third-party labs like AV-Test. In its July 2015 report on Android security apps, AV-Test reported that Norton detected 99.9 percent of the 3,336 malicious samples used in the evaluation. Norton does not participate in tests by the independent lab AV-Comparatives.
I saw that my phone took a slight hit in performance when running a test SD card scan. With 12 apps running in the background and a Norton SD card scan, I noticed some slight problems while playing Minecraft—Pocket Edition. This didn't last long because of the brevity of Norton's scans, but other apps scanned my phone and let my games run smoothly in testing. Still, it's a minor complaint.
Notably, Norton warns you about some malicious apps before you download them. Once the App Advisor tool is fully configured, which I'll explain below, a strip appears at the bottom of entries in Google Play letting you know Norton's verdict. In most cases, the app shows you a very informative page about its impact on your privacy and device performance. In the case of EICAR, Norton popped up a message informing me that it was malicious. With this Google Play integration, Norton has the ability to warn consumers about the rare malicious apps that make it onto Google's app store. It's a powerful feature, and one I've never seen in competing products.
Anti-Theft Features
While mobile malware is a rising threat, the most-immediate danger is loss and theft. With the industry average for Android antivirus detection clustered at just below 100 percent, anti-theft features are often the differentiators among security suites.
With Norton, you can remotely lock, locate, and wipe your device. You can also take a photo of the thief with the Sneak Peek feature, start a backup, and activate a loud Scream alarm. You can activate these features either from the excellently designed Norton Web portal or by using special commands sent via SMS. Note that the Wipe feature, which launches a full factory reset of your phone, can only be triggered over the Web. That's a prudent precaution against someone abusing these SMS commands.
I am a bit concerned that Norton does not require you to register the phone number sending the commands before sending commands. True, it means you can borrow any phone to send SMS commands, but it also means that someone can do the same to you—provided they have access to your PIN.
You can configure Norton to automatically lock your device when the SIM card is removed. I am disappointed that this feature is not presented as an option during setup, and that you have to dive into the settings menu to activate it. Though it works as advertised, I don't like that the app has no way of alerting me if someone is messing with my SIM. Prey, a stand-alone anti-theft app, has you nominate someone who receives a message when your SIM card is replaced.
I like that Norton's Sneak Peek spy camera feature gives users more control over their devices and that it automatically captures several images over time. I also like that Locate and Sneak Peek are automatically engaged when you remotely lock your phone. Lookout, on the other hand, only captures images after three failed attempts to unlock a device, giving you a better chance of capturing a thief's face. Norton's solution is to continually capture images, store the most recent ten online, and download the ones you think will be useful.
Norton includes a backup tool, but I'm a bit disappointed that it only copies your contacts and nothing else. While your apps can be easily re-downloaded from Google, you'll have to find another backup solution for your files, your images, and everything else. It is useful that Norton allows you to view backed-up contacts online and download them as a CSV file. You can also restore contacts from a different device—though I had trouble with this feature in my testing.
I really like Norton's collection of anti-theft tools and the excellent site it provides for managing your devices. But Avast Mobile Security & Antivirus, our Editors' Choice for free Android antivirus, has many more in-depth options that will thrill geeky security wonks.
Web Protection
Phishing is a popular avenue of attack, whether you're surfing the Web on a desktop or a mobile device. To counter this threat, Norton includes Web protection that screens for known malicious URLs and fraudulent (phishing) URLs. Note that this feature only protects the stock Android browser, Chrome, and Samsung browsers.
In my hands-on testing, I navigated to 10 confirmed phishing sites as designated byPhishtank. Happily, Norton blocked 90 percent of these pages, some of which were mere hours old. This is a small, simple test, but Norton had outperformed all the competitors to date. Norton is currently tied with Bitdefender for the top score in this test.
Call Blocking
Many security apps include call-blocking and SMS-blocking features. Unfortunately, blocking text messages is all but impossible since Android 4.4. To its credit, Norton has de-emphasized the SMS-blocking powers of its app, while others have confusingly left the nonfunctional tools in place.
Blacklisting callers is a snap in Norton; you can enter numbers manually or pull from your call log. When a blocked caller tries to contact you, he'll be immediately dumped to voicemail. You might see a flicker of a notification on your phone, but nothing else.
App Advisor
Several security vendors have begun to pay greater attention to the grey area of apps which might not necessarily harm your device but may leak personal information, or execute some truly unusual behavior.
Other apps that rate the potential security flaws in Android apps simply break down apps by the permissions they require and include boilerplate descriptions of why they might hurt your privacy. Norton, on the other hand, includes incredibly detailed information. Each entry has details about the specific app's battery usage and how often the app uses mobile data in addition to privacy ratings. Best of all, you have the option to see this information in the Google Play store, giving you extra assurance (or warnings) about apps. This is a great example of a security company turning the information it can gather from millions of customers into actual protection.
Excellent Protection
Symantec Norton Security and Antivirus offers complete protection for your Android device, whether the threats come from malicious applications, phishing sites, or thieves. It costs slightly more than competing apps, but its generous license plan more than makes up for it. Symantec Norton Security and Antivirus joins Avast and Bitdefender Mobile Security and Antivirus as our top picks for Android antivirus tools.
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