Ikarus Mobile Security for Android

With its reliable scanning and monitoring, Ikarus Mobile Security proves to be an efficient albeit slow antivirus app that may detect threats that faster scanners can miss. It's questionable, though, whether all the threats are real, or if the app has just an unnecessarily high scanning sensitivity (that slows down the scanning).

Pros

Strong scanner: Ikarus Mobile Security's scanner looks at both apps and files and can be run manually as well as set to work automatically in the background as often as two times a day. During our tests it picked up potential threats that other popular security apps did not notice.

Good real-time protection: The built-in monitoring feature runs smoothly in the background and scans all downloads, including apps and email attachments, providing efficient real-time protection. Having tried out several other mobile antivirus apps, recently, we feel that this app's monitoring feature is one of the most thorough and unobtrusive.

Cons

Slow scanning: It took us well over five minutes to scan a 16GB Nexus 7 with this app. Other free malware scanners can do the job in less than 30 seconds.

Excessive scanning sensitivity: The ZIP file that this app identified as a virus was not picked up by several other top-rated antivirus apps. It's hard to believe that the archive was a true virus; it was more likely spammy yet harmless adware.

Bottom Line

Ikarus Mobile Security makes a positive impression and, while its scanning may be relatively slow, its monitoring capabilities do make amends for it. If you haven't yet found the right antivirus app for you, you should give this one a go. It may not be the best out there, but it's without a doubt efficient. The paid version includes a URL filter, Theft Protection, and a Message Blacklist.