Bit of a misleading or ambiguous title...
TL;DR version is that 80 android AV apps had 100% detection rate and are far from useless. These are well known brands such as ESET, Fsecure, Kaspersky, Avast etc.
As anyone can publish apps in the app store, there are many fake apps trying to get advertising money by offering what looks to be an antivirus product but doesn't do much. Those are the useless ones. Don't Use an AV product you don't recognise.
Just stick to AV brands with a good reputation and you will be ok and have useful protection. Ignore the US and UK government attacks on Kaspersky, it is in the top 3 of all AV software and its reputation is very good among security professionals.
If you install APK's from non-play store sources, ESETs software will jump in and scan it before passing it on to the install stage. It's overhead is very small too.
---------- Post added at 10:33 ---------- Previous post was at 10:21 ----------
Quote:
Originally Posted by RichardCoulter
I was always under the impression that Android didn't need any protection as the risk was so tiny.
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Pretty much every operating system can benefit from AntiVirus protection as all can be hacked/exploited and infected.
How you use your phone opens up the size of the attack surface and possibility of infection. If you don't install APK's from random places or visit dodgy sites, your chance of infection is much smaller than someone who does.
At the same time, visitors to many top 100 legit sites have been infected with malware due to bad adverts served on those domains and vulnerabilities in browsers. Although the chance is tiny from visiting a main newspaper site for example, it can and does happen.
There was a recent chrome exploit that also affected android, so just visiting a site could get you infected if they use the exploit code.
Security is always about layers and usability. If your phone slows down to a crawl with AV software, then don't use it. But they have been made to use few resources and not be noticeable so I would recommend trying one. Free ones are going to be noisy and let you know how great they are doing in the hope you buy their premium version. Paid ones like ESET are pretty much silent until they are needed. Try a few but keep to the known brands.