I’ve been using Avast! Anti-Theft for years. I even bought premium ages ago and kept it right up until they removed it. Most of the time I also had Avast! Internet Security on my PCs too and I was also paying for that, until that software got so bad that I ended up removing it. Still, on mobile - Avast! still had by far, the best solution to theft protection. So I kept it on my phone.
Then you guys took away the rooted installation app. Tons of features were just lost completely. You can blame it on updates to Android that made some of those features stop working, but I and tens, if not hundreds of millions more people are in no rush to update our phones to the latest version of Android, so those features still worked. After the removal of the rooted app, I was absolutely crushed and the difference between Avast! and competitors was made MUCH smaller. We know for a fact that you could have kept developing those features and even worked together with Xposed users, but you just dropped all rooted development entirely, even though those features gave people MORE control and MORE options with their devices.
After that premium features were removed and made for free. A small victory for some, a huge victory for many. But it wasn’t to last at all. As you split up the features in 1 app and released tons of different ones, forcing people to download them instead of just leaving the features in the Anti-Theft app.
Now what, with this new, even MORE stripped down and ugly version that doesn’t REMOTELY resemble anything from Avast! I am supposed to believe that this is the ‘best version of Anti-Theft yet’? Where are the new features? Hell, where are the OLD features we loved? There are LESS features in the new app, when compared to the old one…
What happened to the following features?
- The good old way of downloading your own custom Anti-Theft package, and being able to rename it to whatever you want in order to confuse thieves. - Gone
- Taking a picture of a person when they enter your unlock code incorrectly too many times - Gone?
- Invisible Binary commands - Gone?
- App locker - Gone? Or at least, put into another useless app that I have to install just to get this feature, when it was perfect whilst included in the Anti-Theft app.
- The ability to deny program settings access to a thief if the phone is marked as lost - Gone, but what… now it’s back again?
- Uninstall protection when wiping the phone, so Anti-Theft still exists after a full wipe - Gone
- App uninstall protection with PIN (even if phone isn’t locked) - Gone
- Anti-Theft app uninstall/device admin removal protection (even if phone isn’t locked) - Gone
- Geofencing - Gone in the new app
Look at all those features that don’t exist any more! What about many more? They all just disappeared. So I’m supposed to think that my device is protected now, by this ‘free’ software that has no premium options any more. No rooted permissions, no nothing. Someone can just wipe my phone, and bam the protection is gone.
Why did you guys kill what was such a good product? I mean it’s no secret that people now think your PC Anti-Virus and Internet Security suites have fallen greatly over the last 2 years and that they now resemble the very malware that they claim to remove. Why did you add all these useless features to what was the world’s best protection against malicious attacks to your personal data and devices?
Can someone please explain how this stripped down, feature-less Mobile security app is even remotely as good as the App I just uninstalled? Because now I probably reinstall back the older version, or remove it completely to move to a competitor. I thought apps are meant to be improved and features are supposed to be gradually added, not gradually removed…