The best part, by the way, is that they’re almost all completely free.
With more than 1 million apps in Google’s Android app store, finding the best apps that Google’s popular mobile platform has to offer can be a chore. Actually, that’s putting it very mildly… it can be a huge pain in the butt.
Here on BGR, we regularly highlight Android apps that we think shine brighter than most, and we have shown you plenty of awesome apps over the years that we think are must-haves. When Google takes the time to put together its own list of must-have Android apps, however, it’s definitely worth checking out.
Google’s list is packed full of terrific apps. Some of them are applications that almost everyone with an Android phone will have already heard of, such as the Netflix app, the eBay app and Google’s own YouTube app. Others are less popular but still staples among most Android users.
Then, there are a handful of apps that you might not have already come across, but you’ll be very happy that you’re finding them now.
As far as purchases are concerned, online sales were up 8.3 percent over the same period on Christmas Day 2013, while mobile sales went up 20.4 percent. Taking everyone who bought something online on Christmas Day into account, the average order value was $100.33, a jump of 6.2 percent from the figure recorded in 2013.
We might spend a lot of time browsing on our mobiles, but when it comes to actually clicking the purchase button, desktops and laptops remain the most popular devices: 65.2 percent of all online sales on Christmas Day were made from a computer Web browser. Consumers also spent more money on desktops and laptops than on mobiles, perhaps because we want a better look at those big ticket items before splashing the cash.
In terms of comparing smartphone platforms, iOS users spent more time online, bought more stuff and paid more for each item than those toting devices running Android. iOS traffic accounted for 39.1 percent of total online traffic for Christmas Day, more than double the 17.7 percent figure recorded for Android. Are Android users less well-off or just more interested in spending time with the family? IBM doesn’t speculate.
The company did look at the relative performance of Facebook vs Pinterest for driving sales, though, through its Smarter Commerce system. Pinterest edged the battle, with referrals averaging $99.86 per order as opposed to the $89.90 per order registered from Facebook referrals. You can read the full report via the IBM analytics hub.
Two French organizations, including the French National Institute for Informatics Research (INRIA) and the National Commission on Computing and Liberty (CNIL), installed a monitoring app on Android phones belonging to 10 different people, encouraging them to use the handsets as they normally do.
For a three-month period, the volunteers collectively used 121 apps, with Mobilitics recording every time one of these apps accessed personal data, including location, identifier, photos, messages and other info. The app also tracked whether the data was transmitted to a server or not.
Almost two-thirds of apps accessed at least one identifier, 25% of them accessed at least two identifiers and a sixth of apps three or more, the study found. However, it’s not clear what kind of devices were used, or what Android OS version they were running.
Location accounted for 30% of all personal data accessed, with the study revealing some interesting numbers. For example, the Facebook app recorded one person’s location 150,000 times during the three-month period, or more than once per minute. The Google Play Store tracked a user’s phone 10 times per minute at certain times. One game recorded a user’s location 3,000 times while it was in use.
But the most amazing stat belongs to an unspecified default Android app made by Google, which checked a user’s location 1 million times in one month.
As the study reveals, it’s pretty easy for app developers to track users by simply looking at a phone’s Wi-Fi and/or Internet state, with the resulting data being enough for target advertising. Additionally, the data can be aggregated in order to profile users and their social networks even better.
Android 5.0 Lollipop was announced during the summer as Android L, then officially released as Lollipop several months later. It’s available on Google’s latest Nexus 9 and Nexus 6 devices, and is currently being sent out to older Nexus phones and tablets, plus the Google Play Edition hardware. Manufacturers including LG, HTC, and Samsung are all working on bringing the new version out, but most will not do so until early next year.
It’s no surprise Lollipop hasn’t made an impact on Google’s results yet, then. However, while it may be the most recent version of Android, it’s unlikely to be the most widely used for some considerable time. Android 4.x Jelly Bean retains the lead and is installed on just over 48 percent of the devices visiting the Play Store, but it’s 4.4 KitKat which is mounting the most convincing challenge against it for supremacy in the app store. During the summer, Google reported KitKat was installed on 20 percent of phones, but as of today, it’s up to 33.9 percent. If it can maintain momentum, it’ll be right behind Jelly Bean by March 2015.
We shouldn’t write Lollipop off though. Don’t forget, Google wants Lollipop to be installed on many different devices, with large and small screens, so the influx of smartwatches, and new phones running Android One could give it a big boost if sales increase over the coming months. The next set of results from Google will give us a better idea of how its plan is progressing.
A malware threat first observed in 2012 has evolved and hijacked more than 4 million Android devices to send spam emails, buy event tickets in bulk and crack WordPress accounts. In its new and improved form, the threat is now putting enterprise networks at risk.
Mobile security firm Lookout first discovered NotCompatible in 2012 (variant “A”), when the malware disguised itself as a system update, which if downloaded turned the infected device into an attacker-controlled proxy. “We’ve seen increasingly sophisticated threats emerging – for the first time ever, we witnessed malware writers targeting the mobile Web via compromised or infected websites with the NotCompatible threat,” said Derek Halliday, senior product manager at Lookout, in an interview with Digital Trends back in August 2012.
Since then, Lookout has tracked the NotCompatible threat and is now reporting the emergence of NotCompatible.C, the newest iteration of the malware. What makes NotCompatible.C a bigger threat than the original version is its ability to infiltrate secure enterprise networks by way of infected devices.
“NotCompatible.C is ultimately a botnet-for-rent; though the server architecture, peer-to-peer communications, and encryption make it a much more formidable threat,” according to Lookout. In other words, the new version of NotCompatible makes it more difficult for network security systems to detect and block.
Spam email blasts and compromised websites are the delivery channels for the “drive-by-downloads” that infect devices with NotCompatible.C. The malware relies on the gullibility of Android users – for instance, including a link to an Android application package (APK) in an email about weight loss solutions.
The malware is costly for owners of infected Android phones. Not only does it use data that counts against a user’s carrier plan, it also drains a phone’s battery.
Lookout offers two strategies to protect against NotCompatible.C: use an advanced mobile security platform to detect the threat at device level and segment networks to limit the potential reach of an infected device. Lookout says its mobile app is able to defend Android devices from NotCompatible.C.
To read a more detailed analysis of the NotCompatible.C threat, read Lookout’s report.
Lookout’s report about NotCompatible.C is hardly alone in sounding the warning bell for Android users. According to online security firm F-Secure, 99 percent of mobile malware threats in Q1 2014 were designed to run on Android devices. Meanwhile, Cheetah Mobile, a company that makes mobile apps to clean, protect and optimize phones, recently reported that 9 percent of Android apps are fully or partially malware.
Over a month ago Google released patches for bugs affecting the built-in browser on all pre-KitKat devices, yet today half of all Android devices remain vulnerable, according to mobile security vendor Lookout.
The same origin policy (SOP) bug in the browser that ships with all versions of below Android 4.4 illustrates yet again the patching problem in Android — often caused by slow-to-respond handset makers and carriers.
In early September security researcher Rafay Baloch discovered two bugs in the Android Open Source Project (AOSP) browser — called Browser in Android 4.3 and earlier — that meant it failed to enforce SOP. As Google notes, SOP is "perhaps the most important security concept within modern browsers" that's meant to securely govern how content from multiple domains is handled in a browser.
At the time, Todd Beardsley, a researcher with security firm Rapid 7, described the bug as a "privacy disaster", explaining that "any arbitrary website (say, one controlled by a spammer or a spy) can peek into the contents of any other web page". The bug also allowed an attacker to hijack a web session by stealing a session cookie.
Since the affected browser ships with all pre-KitKat versions of Android (Google dropped the browser in Android 4.4), it would mean that around 75 percent of all Android users with the Google Play app could be exposed to such an attack, according to Google's figures.
Google released patches for the two flaws shortly after researchers built an exploit for the bug and added it to the penetration testing framework Metasploit.
Despite a patch being available, carriers and handset makers often take their time to distribute that patch in a firmware update to end users. To make matters worse, other browsers built using the ASOP browser were also affected, including Samsung's browser as well as two others available on Google Play.
According to Lookout, whose Android security product has been installed on up to 100 million smartphones, the problem is worse in some countries than others. For example, in Japan, 81 percent of its users are running the vulnerable browser, while across Europe the figure is around 60 percent. In the US, 34 percent of Lookout users have it installed.
"Phones in those regions may receive updates less frequently, thus they are more likely to be vulnerable. The US, on the other hand, has a lower risk because the average age of phones is also much lower. Therefore, fewer of them are vulnerable," Lookout's Jeremy Linden and Meghan Kelly wrote in a blog post.
"Unless and until the AOSP browser is patched, people using it could be exposed to data theft or worse as a malicious attacker with access to an authenticated user session could take any action the user would on that site."
While they advise users running Android 4.3 to update to KitKat, as many Android users will know that's not always possible. The other option if an update isn't possible is to buy a newer device.
As per the advice from security experts at the time, the safest option is to disable the default Android browser since it's unlikely it can be uninstalled. After doing this, people should install an unaffected browser, such as Chrome or Firefox.
