[clug] Android in the Business Press

Nathan O'Sullivan nathan at mammoth.com.au
Thu May 13 20:34:31 MDT 2010


> without editorial control they're going to end up being the Windows of 
> the phone world, where the first piece of software you have to load on 
> an Android phone is a malware detector, and half your processor speed 
> (and more importantly for a portable computer, battery life) is 
> consumed by that software.
>

A great feature of Android is they took a technical approach to this 
issue: since the apps are all Java, the only way to do "bad things" is 
through the appropriate API. When you upload an app to Android Market, 
it analyses what APIs you use and when it comes time to install the app, 
your phone tells you what the app wants to do (use the GPS, use the 
network, make calls, send SMS, and a few others)

With this mechanism you can pretty easily see if an app will do 
something that it shouldnt

Regards
Nathan


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