[1eyedjack]

Hi all. Just in case any forum regulars are in the know about these things, I am thinking of spending some serious dosh on a smartphone - probably iphone 3GS or HTC HD2 (leaning in favour of the latter).

Would I be right in saying that, without installing protective measures, these devices are vulnerable to malware? I am guessing yes.

Is one of these models particularly more vulnerable than the other? In the conventional pc market, I understand that both windows-based and apple-based machines have theoretically similar levels of vulnerability, but windows-based machines are more heavily targetted because of their market dominance. Perhaps the reverse is the case in the phone market, as apple is the market leader (but for how long?)

What software is recommended to protect the phone (or is there a choice of broadly equivalent products), and does this tend to come pre-installed on purchase?

My limited experiences with more traditional computers tells me that whatever protection you install only provides limited protection and vulnerability can never be wholly eradicated. So my final 2 questions are:

Do these phones allow you to take incremental backups to external media, including of operating system as well as data files, ie in the same way that I can use NovaStor backup to protect my pc?

If despite best efforts your phone ends up being infected, is it possible to reinstall the operating system etc back to its factory settings, and does the answer to this vary (or vary in complexity) depending on the above model chosen?

Thanks for any feedback