Last updated on June 2, 2015

The security of smartphones in general is a growing concern as they become more common, more advanced, and essentially more attractive for people and organizations seeking your personal information, not to mention they are easy money for old-fashioned thieves.

Given all this, and how your Android phone or tablet probably holds all your personal information, pictures, contacts, emails, passwords and more, it’s important that you start caring about securing all this information and your phone.

While there are several Mobile Security & Antivirus apps on the Play Store, today we’re going to be reviewing Bitdefender Mobile Security & Antivirus app to find out whether it’s worth its $1.49/month or $14.95/year license key.

Bitdefender Antivirus isn’t a new name though, and the company has been around since 2001, developing internet security software that has repeatedly been acclaimed by publications such as PCMAG and CNET. In light of this, we had high expectations from their Android app.

To start off, the app can be downloaded freely from the Play Store for a 14-day trial, which should be enough for you to decide whether you want to buy a license key for it. The app’s size is also quite reasonable at 6.38 Mb, which means installing it on low-end phones won’t be a problem.

At the first run you are prompted to either log in with your Bitdefender ID or your Google ID (we chose the later), and the app moved on to confirming our phone’s name for identification. These initial settings only take about a minute before you are at the main screen, where you’ll have 6 options – Malware Scanner, Privacy Advisor, Web Security, Anti-Theft, App Lock and Reports.

The Malware Scanner is essentially the core malware protection feature which can scan your existing apps, your device’s storage, and be set to scan all new apps automatically.

While the scanner ran, we didn’t experience any lag or freezes and letting it run in the background for automatically scanning new apps didn’t slow down the phone or result in excessive battery drain, both of which are plus points when compared with other similar mobile security apps for Android.

Moving onto the Privacy Advisor, the feature is very useful if you install a lot of apps and games on your Android without taking the time to read permissions (which is something we strongly recommend). Bitdefender essentially warns you about apps that have intrusive permissions and even provides details, like portals where your location or contact information is being sent by an app.

However, we recommend the use of this feature as an “advisory” tool and not a conclusive assessment of whether an app is truly leaking your private information. Nevertheless, its a good tool to keep an eye on data your apps have access to.

The Web Security feature is quite straight forward as well. It basically prevents your Android phone or tablet’s browser from opening up web pages and URLs which are known to contain malware or phishing content. Since the app itself can’t really identify these pages in real-time, it queries Bitdefender’s cloud servers for known threats.

The App Lock feature also does exactly what it says. You can simply select a short pin code and then choose which apps you wish to lock. After you’ve set it up, every time you run an app which was locked, you will be prompted to enter the pin code. This is useful if you want to keep personal data like messages, images and videos secure in general.

We tested the app lock on the Call Log app and it worked perfectly, even when we tried to bypass it with the home button. We were however able to get a sneak peak at the call log screen in the small duration before the app was minimized, but that is something no app lock can prevent.

The Anti-Theft feature is what most users are interested in, and Bitdefender’s Mobile Security app covers all the bases here. You get both Web Control and SMS Control, which means you don’t need internet access in order to locate your phone or wipe it.

Before you get started, you need to give Bitdefender the required Admin Privileges and then set up a Trusted Number, which is basically the number that you will be using to communicate with your phone if it’s lost or stolen.

Once you’re set up, you can log on to the Bitdefender portal to locate your phone, wipe it, make it sound an alarm or lock it with a pin code.

SMS Control also allows you to perform the same functions, albeit by sending messages from the trusted number you added earlier. For instance, in order to make our phone sound an alarm, we had to send “BD-1234 scream” in a text message (1234 was our pin code and the message was sent without the quotation marks).

Similarly, you can send BD-1234 Locate and get a Google Maps link in reply, with the location of your phone. This however is a feature that requires internet access or GPS to work properly, and is not very reliable without good coverage or a network connection.

The most interesting Anti-Theft feature however was Call Me. When we sent BD-1234 Callme to our phone in a text message, the phone automatically dialed a call to the trusted number and minimized the dialer to prevent it from being visible. While it is not perfectly discreet, it is the best an app can do, and if successful, you can actually listen in to whoever has your phone.

The best thing about SMS Control was that all texts we sent with the pin code to communicate with Bitdefender were hidden from the original messaging app, so if anyone actually has your phone, they won’t really know that you’re trying to communicate with it by sending texts.

Finally you have the Reports option, which is very basic and simply gives you a summary of the app’s operations like scanning for malware.

Additionally, Bitdefender’s app is also compatible with Android Wear, which should come in very handy if you own an Android Wear watch like the Moto 360.

The WearOn feature gives you two additional security options – receiving an alert when you are moving away from your phone (so you don’t leave it behind) and making your phone ring (even if it’s on silent) with your Android Wear watch.

That just about covers all the features and options in Bitdefender’s Mobile Security & Antivirus app for Android. While we feel these features are comprehensive enough and cover all aspects of mobile security, it is the performance aspect of Bitdefender’s app which puts it ahead of the competition

There are other apps which offer very similar features, but they are very bloated and cause major performance issues and battery drain problems. Fortunately, we faced none of these issues with Bitdefender’s app, which is why we recommend it for people who want solid Anti-Theft features and a fast Malware Scanner and Privacy Advisor.

If you’re still not sure about the app, we would advise that you download the free 14-day trial version from the link below and give it a try on your Android device. In case you have any questions or feedback, please feel free to comment below or write to us.