Comodo joins the Android antivirus club

Whether antivirus apps for Android phones are useful or not is still topic of debate. If you're of the "better safe than sorry" type, if you shop outside the Android Market, or if you want to use the extra features that most Android security suites throw in it makes sense to pick the right weapon.

Comodo makes the best free firewall and HIPS program for Windows, but not the best antivirus app. Comodo for Android lacks a firewall, doesn't do HIPS, and the rest of the app doesn't lead the pack either.

As far as virus detection goes, Lookout versus Comodo versus avast doesn't make any real world difference yet. In the current Android world, the extra features are what matters.

And that's where Comodo is no match for the competition.

The task manager in Comodo doesn't add anything to Androids built-in app control panel, and both are nowhere near as fast as the task manager in AirDroid. Not that I want to fire up the task killer debate, but sometimes it's nice to kill apps like Google Maps or WhatsApp without having to wait for Androids own slow native task manager.

Comodo doesn't have any "find my phone" or remote lock and wipe features. Avast wins, because they have a pretty good way to find, lock, and wipe missing phones and unlike Lookout avast gives it away for free.

So what's in Comodo that you might want to use? The task scheduler is very limited. It may be useful to auto-switch to flight mode at night, but there is no shortage of better task schedulers on the Android Market and many of them are free. Call blocking? Plenty of superiour options out there. Which leaves the "private space" of Comodo. This lets you password-protect contacts and messages. A useful feature, but there are plenty of other apps that do it better.

Comodo is a work in progress, but in its present state it's un unfinished product that doesn't compete with avast.

• Comodo (Android Market)
• avast!