The world's most-used Android app may surprise you

You'd expect to see apps such as Twitter, Facebook, and WhatsApp on top of the most used lists for Android, but this isn't the case. According to app analytics tracking firm Drawbridge, the most used app of Q4 2015 was Clean Master by Cheetah Mobile, a Chinese mobile internet company. Clean Master is an app management platform that promises to "improve your device's performance by cleaning junk files, optimizing device memory, providing complete protections against viruses and managing the apps you installed."

The company targets their app directly at the low level of tech know-how of the average consumer. Plain and simple, most users just want their device to perform fast! Without understanding what the application really does, they see a promising illusion of a 'speedier and cleaner' device. It's hard to blame consumers when the appeal is so great and the marketing and design is done exceptionally well.

Apps like Clean Master may have once been useful but Android has progressed far enough that they are now obsolete, unnecessary, and can be harmful. The Android operating system has it's own native handler for assigning RAM to apps and making sure that all of it is being used in the most optimal way. In fact, Android purposely tries to keep apps loaded into RAM for better performance. Remember, RAM is fast, so on mobile devices every bit of speed is crucial for a good user experience. Therefore, keeping apps in RAM is actually a good thing!

Not only does Android handle RAM assignment, but it also keeps track of background apps, automatically closing or hibernating them so that there isn't a noticeable performance hit for leaving apps loaded in RAM.

App killers, memory boosters, performance enhancers and the like, all claim that freeing up your memory will speed up your device. With current versions of Android, this simply isn't true and actually does quite the opposite. Task killer apps kill other apps which use resources to process. When the operating system restarts those tasks, or other apps to fill the memory again, this takes even more resources. The task killer app kills again and the process repeats itself continuously. Essentially, these apps reduce performance and decrease battery life by restarting apps again and again. It's important to understand that dormant apps on your device don't consume any additional resources (for example, CPU time and battery life) in the first place. Additionally, apps like Clean Master barrage your device with unnecessary notifications, like how a certain app is stealing x-amount of RAM and how another app is violating privacy (without any proof), which often hurt productivity and can be quite distracting and annoying for the user.

Beware of apps that claim to instantly 'breathe new life' into your device. Android's RAM and cache management systems are rock solid. Because these task killer apps clear out even the essential processes of the operating system, restarting them is a big drain on system resources. Whatever speed increase the user feels is purely imaginary which makes this probably the best example of a placebo effect in the Android world. Be sure to check out the Lifehacker article to learn more about task killer apps and alternative ways to increase the performance of your device. For expert advice on technology and Google related assistance, be sure to contact our InterlockIT support team!

BlackBerry is repositioning itself as a device management company—but is already being beaten by Google

BlackBerry recently published an open letter to its "valued enterprise customers and partners," to remind everyone that they "are very much alive, thank you." The newly-minted CEO, John Chen, makes an important—and telling—concession to the "new" mobile computing landscape: recognizing "that BlackBerry devices are not for everyone."

Unfortunately BlackBerry devices are losing ground faster than ever according to data released by Gartner last month. BlackBerry now sits at a mere 1.8% of the global smartphone market, compared with 5.2% at the same time last year.

As a result of their declining sales of smartphones to end users, BlackBerry is beginning to reposition itself to focus on a handful of what it sees as key areas: enterprise mobile management (EMM) solutions and embedded systems, as well as cross-platform instant messaging (BBM).

It's not hard to see why BlackBerry sees the need to pivot away from what has traditionally been its strength, but unfortunately it's pivoting straight into a marketplace where it's pricing itself out of contention. BlackBerry's enterprise management capability revolves around the BlackBerry Enterprise Service (BES), a software package that requires you to either manage an on-site server or pay for hosting one in the cloud, in addition to the $19 per year management fee. Add to that the fact that the newest version of BES (10.2) can't manage BlackBerry devices running older versions of the BlackBerry operating system and you need to double your server count just to be able to manage both generations of devices.

As if all that wasn't enough, the $19 license fee is charged per device, so if you have two devices, each one of them needs its own license fee. And who doesn't have a smartphone and a tablet these days? In fact, a Sophos survey says consumers are carrying an average of 2.9 mobile devices each.

Google Apps for Business and Education includes bring-your-own-device (BYOD) security for iOS, Android, and BlackBerry 10 in the $50 per user per year price tag—which includes activation on an unlimited number of mobile devices. We've tested management of BlackBerry 10 devices from the Google Apps console and it provides remote wipe and monitoring capabilities just as it would for any other device. There's really no need for a BES.

For about $12 more per year than two BES device fees per user, you can have an all-in-one, cloud-based productivity suite that includes BYOD management features and can replace your Exchange, Lotus Notes, or other email and documents solution. Sticking with BlackBerry means you're on the receiving end of all the IT headaches involved with patching, securing, and managing yet another server (or two!).

All of us at Interlock IT live close to BlackBerry headquarters in Waterloo and sincerely hope that they can find a successful market niche. BES 10.2 does have some advanced security features not found in other products. But the BYOD market is a highly competitive space already well-covered by giants like Google so BlackBerry has a tall, competitive mountain to climb.

Does anybody remember Palm?

Canada tops for mobile data loss

The HR Reporter recently shared a study by the Ponemon Institute which Crashplan also highlighted on their blog.

HRReporter.com notes:

• Corporate mobile devices and the bring-your-own device (BYOD) phenomenon are rapidly circumventing enterprise security and policies in Canada.
• 71 percent of 421 respondents in Canada agree the use of mobile devices in the workplace is important to achieving business objectives.
• 72 percent of Canadian respondents also believe these devices put their organizations at risk — and only  half of the organizations surveyed have the necessary security controls to address the risk.
• 58 percent of the organizations experienced data loss resulting from employee use of insecure mobile devices.
• Canada and Italy ranked the highest out of 12 countries surveyed for mobile data loss.

Bottom line is Mobile devices are a huge security risk.  Smartphones can store an immense amount of sensitive emails and contact databases which may easily fall into unfriendly hands.

Google Apps has excellent built in Mobile Device Management that allows customers to remotely wipe the synced data contents of iPhones, and Androids plus enforce password and screen lock policies.  You can even control and approve what devices are allowed to connect to your organization's Google Apps data.

For Blackberries we offer a Google Apps integrated Blackberry Enterprise Server solution for $10/device/month with similar capabilities for remote wipe of data, etc.

There are no complex integrations requirements or other extra costs for Mobile Device Management with Google Apps for iPhone, iPad, or Android devices.  There is no need to purchase expensive 3rd party solutions like RIM Mobile Fusion that exceed the $50 USD/year/user cost of Google Apps.  Zenprise is another Mobile Device Management solution with prices starting at $40/device/year.

Contact us at Interlockit.com to learn more about protecting your organization's valuable data with Google Apps.