You might be asking yourself if you read the headline to this post correctly. A 2200% growth in the number of malicious Android apps, can that be right? Unfortunately it is. According to the Mobile Threat Report Q1 2012 released by security company F-Secure, the number of malicious Android application package files (APKs) they received in the first three months of the year grew from 139 in 2011 to 3063 for the same period in 2012. Similarly, in 2011 security researchers discovered 10 new families of Android malware. Move forward twelve months, and that number has grown nearly four-fold with 37 new families and variants discovered in Q1 2012.

So why the growth? For one part, it is due to Android’s popularity. As market shares have grown and companies like Samsung have moved into the top handset manufacturer spots, Android has become a lucrative target for malware writers. Greed is a powerful motivator and the majority of malware is written to gain money illegally and unethically. The 2200% jump in malicious apps is largely due to attempts by malware writers to modify malware signatures to defeat anti-virus detection coupled with an increase in the number of apps trojanized.

This trojanizing of popular apps is a key strategy for cyber criminals. They take a popular game, say Angry Birds, and then add malware to it. Next, it is disseminated via third party app stores or via direct download links on social networking sites. Unsuspecting victim’s download the app which in turn infects their Android device. In the case of premium rate SMS malware, the next phone bill is unexpectedly large!

Three interesting malware packages found in the last year include:

• FakeToken.A, a Trojan that pretends to be a token generator for mobile banking. The malware works by impersonating a valid token generator but, in fact, only issues random numbers while in the background sending the username and password for the mobile banking to a command and control server.
• Boxer.H, a new variant of the existing Boxer family, which pretends to be Google Play.
• RootSmart.A, downloads an exploit to gain root privileges on the infected device. This in turn allows it to install more applications / malware. It also has a bot component that can receive commands from a remote server. These commands include malicious money making actions like sending premium rate SMS messages, and accessing pay-per-view videos.

As always – be careful what you download and from where you download it!

Are you concerned about Android malware? Are you a victim? What do you think Google should do about it? Let us know by leaving a comment below.

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Samsung must be a little jealous of LG after the announcement that the LG Optimus LTE2 will be the first smartphone to ship with 2GB RAM because Samsung has announced that the Japanese version of the Galaxy S3 will now also ship with 2GB RAM. LG was the first company to introduce a smartphone featuring a dual core processor after all. Hopefully the 2GB version of the Galaxy S3 will make it across the pond later this year.

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The HTC Desire C (also known as the Wildfire S or HTC Golf) is the follow up to the Wildfire S. It is a recently released smartphone to provide an inexpensive alternative to the One X, One S, and One V. The Desire C features a 600Mhz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor with a Adreno 200 GPU, 4 GB of onboard storage and 512 MB of RAM. a 3.5″ display running at a native resolution of 320 x 480. The device ships with Android 4.0.3 ICS. The specs for the Desire C are not very impressive but it provides a cheap alternative to some of the top of the line smartphones. Check the benchmarks our for yourself.

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Yesterday we had confirmation from HTC of their low end Desire C phone and today we’ve gotten our hands on the specs of HTC’s upcoming Ville C smartphone thanks to the folks over at BriefsMobile.

The Ville C looks like a slightly detuned HTC One S. Most of the specs were between the Ville C and the One S are the same with a few exceptions. It looks like the Ville C will come with 4.3 inch qHD (AMOLED) display, 16Gb of internal storage, 1Gb RAM, a Qualcomm S3 dual core CPU (MSM8260), a front facing VGA camera, and an 8MP rear camera. The outside of the Ville C will probably be a regular aluminum chassis similar to the build quality of the HTC One V.

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Intel has been saying for years that Nokia has been holding them in the smartphone and tablet chipset market because of their ongoing contract. Now the contract is no more and Intel is charging ahead with the development of new mobile processors.

At their recent investor’s conference in Santa Clara, California, Intel CEO Paul Otellini recently announced that the company will be debuting two new processors in 2013 that are intended for the mobile market. The two processors announced were the 6331, which will be a single core 22nm chip, and the Merrifield that will come in dual core format and also be based on the 22nm manufacturing process. Intel also went on to state that they plan on introducing a 14nm processor by 2014.

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This morning The Wall Street Journal was reporting a new rumor about the upcoming iPhone. Their article detailed that “People familiar with the situation” believe that Apple will produce their upcoming iPhone with a screen that is at least 4″ large. This would make the screen almost 15% larger than that of the current iPhone 4S and would put the new iPhone’s screen real estate up there with phones like the HTC One V.

Production for the new iPhone is slated for June and the release date will most likely be around October, like the iPhone 4S, just in time for the holiday season.

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The Samsung Galaxy S3 has been the most talked about Android phone so far this year and, if you’re anything like me, you’ll do a lot of homework before purchasing one due to its very expensive price tag. Not to worry because Samsung UK has got you covered. They have recently released the complete user manual for the Samsung Galaxy S3. The manual is 181 pages long and covers every aspect of the phone from hardware, sizer, how to hold the device, and how to operate it.

You can get the manual at the Samsung UK website here

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We still don’t know what Apple’s iPhone 5 will look like on the outside but we have gotten some pictures of its internal components. Last month we brought you a picture of what looked like a square home button for the iPhone 5 and today we are bringing you what looks like the phone’s new headphone jack/ Wifi antenna.

The old iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S had the Wifi antenna located at the bottom of the phones near the dock connector while the headphone jack was at the top of the phone. This new design look like both components will be placed at the same location, probably at the top of one side of the iPhone 5, which is very similar to the internal layout of the old iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS. The Wifi antenna looks to be a bit thinner than the previous version, which could hint at a slimmer iPhone 5.

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After months of speculation and name guessing, HTC has finally announced their follow up to the Wildfire S. The new phone will be called the HTC Desire C and will be priced at about $250 outright.

The Desire C will come with a 3.5″ HVGA display, Android 4.0, HTC Sense 4.0, a 1.230 mAh battery, an internal GPS antenna, FM radio, and a Snapdragon S1 600 MHz processor. Furthermore, the phone will feature 4 GB of storage, 512 MB of RAM, a microSD card slot, HSDPA connectivity (7.2 Mbps), proximity sensor, Bluetooth 4.0, and WiFi. The smartphone will be available in red, white, and black colors.

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RIM is creating a lot of buzz with their Blackberry 10 platform; The first RIM devices that will exclusively use a touch screen. Last month RIM handed out a ton of Blackberry 10 Alpha devices to developers and hardware specs, screen shots, and code names have been leaking out ever since. Now we’ve gotten our hands on some Blackberry 10 home screen pictures that show what the OS will probably look like.

The first photo shows the home screen and four small widgets. The widgets show things like the time, weather, pictures, etc.. The four windows on the home screen will show live apps running on the device and will probably be interchangeable in the final release of the OS.

Swiping your finger to the right will bring up the app icon list and swiping to the left will bring up social media feeds and contact information. RIM claims that the scrolling gestures will become like second nature to the user and will allow for seamless one hand operation.

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Less than a year ago, Samsung announced hat they had created a flexible display that could be bent and molded into many different shapes. The new display is also much more durable than current LCD displays because it does not need to use a layer of glass to function. These new screen seem to be the wave of the future and Samsung is already getting huge order from manufacturers.

In an interview with the KoreaTimes.ca.kr Vice Chairman at Samsung, Kwon Oh-Hyun, told the newspaper that Samsung is “getting huge orders from electronic makers for the futuristic lineup of flexible organic light emitting diode (OLED) displays”. Kwon continued that “we will be mass producing flexible OLED displays from the latter half of this year as the demand from our clients is significant.”

We could see these OLED displays as soon at the end of 2012 as rumors are floating around that Samsung will manufacture around 960,000 sheets of these displays by the end of the year.

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We’ve gotten some news of a leak from China that shows three new Nokia S40 smartphones. The leak was first seen on the Chinese search engine Baidu. The devices shown are the Nokia 305, 306 and 311. All three devices appear to be intended for very low end customers. The cheap look, plastic appearance, and outdated buttons are a dead give away of this.

The specs of the phones mentioned by the source of the leak are:

• 305: dual SIM model with 2 megapixel camera
• 306: Single SIM model with 2 megapixel camera
• 311: WCDMA/WiFi and a 3.2 megapixel camera

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The LG Optimus LTE2 has recently been been announced with a whopping 2GB of RAM (the first smart phone to feature such an amount) and now we’ve gotten out hands on some specs for the upcoming LG Eclipse 4G LTE thanks to the guys over at BriefMobile.

The LS970 will apparently come with a Qualcomm APQ8064 under its hood. The APQ8064 is a quad-core Snapdragon S4 chip, and incorporates the same upgraded Adreno 320 GPU as the MSM8960 Pro. Other notable features include a 4.7 inch display with a resolution of 1280×768, 16GB of internal storage, a 13 megapixel rear camera, and a 1.3 megapixel front facing camera.

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Samsung seems to be more focused on Android at the moment with their flagship devices all running the OS but it has just been announced that Samsung is working on a smaller Windows Phone. Maybe Samsung is trying to hitch a ride on the success of nokia’s Lumia 900 phone.

The Samsung Omnia M will be powered by a single core 1Ghz processor, have 384MB RAM, 4GB of internal storage, a 5 megapixel camera, and a super AMOLED display with a 480×800 resolution. There will also be a 0.3 megapixel front mounted camera and a 1500mAh battery. The phone will be very thin, measuring just 10.5mm at the thickest and will weigh in at 119 grams.

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RIM recently applied for two new patents for battery related technology that they have been developing. One of the patents deals with a fuel cell power plant inside of a mobile device. By the looks of it, it appears that the device could be powered by a liquid fuel, which will have to be recharged. With all the talk about hybrid fuel cells, it won’t be any surprise to see people charging up their phones on a hydrogen dock in the future.

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After months of hype about HTC’s flagship One X and One S devices followed by the release of the Samsung Galaxy S3 we’re receiving a lot of news about more wallet friendly future smartphones. We’ve recently seen images of the HTC Golf/ Wildfire C and the ZTE Nove 4.0 and now we’ve found a leaked image of Sony’s new budget smartphone.

The Sony ST26i will have a 4″ display, a 1GH ST-Ericsson U8500 processor, 512MB RAM, and 8GB of internal storage. From those specs it looks like the phone is a step up from the HTC Golf/ Wildfire C and is designed to compete in the middle of the smartphone price spectrum.

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Apple and Nokia are in hot competition to produce what will be the next round of SIM card design. The next round of SIM cards will be much smaller than the current micro SIM, which should allow for more internal space within the devices that use them.

Giesecke and Devrient, the companies producing the prototypes, were on hand at the CTIA in New Orleans showing off Apple’s design for the new Nano SIM. The card design is slightly different than what we have previously seen because the previous model could easily become stuck in a micro SIM slot.

Nokia, who boast that their design is technically superior, was a no- show at the event.

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We’ve seen the press release picture of the HTC Golf but now we’ve gotten our hands on some real pictures of the device. From what I can tell, the device looks just like an HTC Wildfire S (calling the Wildfire S a smartphone would be sacrilegious). The HTC Golf is rumored to feature a very slow sub-Ghz processor, Android 4.0 ICS, 512MB RAM, a 3.5″ display, and 4GB of internal storage. The Golf is also rumored to be called the Wildfire C or the Desire C.

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Many smaller carriers don`t have the luxury of being able to offer the latest and greatest smart phones but Cricket may soon be getting a head up on its competitors with the release of the ZTE Nova 4.0 V8000 (that`s a mouth full). The Nova 4.0 will feature Android 4.0 ICS, a One-core 1.4Ghz Snapdragon processor, 1GB RAM, a 4`display, and a 1900mAh battery that should last for a descent amount of time. The smartphone will also come with 4GB of internal storage and an 8 megapixel camera. All this for around $200-$300 outright.

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