When you are talking about smartphones these days there are really only two choices that everyone talks about. Those choices are either the Android version of a smartphone or the IPhone. While there are other smartphones on the market right now they are so behind these two market leaders that it does not rate mentioning them right now. Right now we are focusing on security and we should keep it focused on the phones that most people use these days. Yes, the Android based phones on the market and the IPhone are two of the most popular phones right now and it is going to be that way for a while.

These two phones have a lot of similar options that are available to them. There are a lot of features that Android took from the IPhone, especially in the beginning and now there are a lot of features that the IPhone is taking from Android. These two behemoths of the smartphone market place are going to be going at it for years to come so there are some things that you should learn about the two.

The one big advantage that the Android operating system has over the IPhone is that there are a lot of different app stores that are available for it. With the IPhone you are only able to get apps when you use the Apple approved app store. That is, unless you root your IPhone to allow it to be able to use apps from a third party. This means that Apple is able to control the types of apps that you are allowed to put on your phone.

If you are interested in a certain subject that Apple doesn’t cater for then, unless you break the warranty on your phone, you will not be able to get the app installed. But with an Android based phone, that is not the case. There are a lot of app stores all over the place that you can use to install apps on your phone. And a lot of these third party app stores specialise in a certain topic. That means you will not have to dig through thousands of apps trying to find the one that you are looking for. You will already be on a site that is dedicated to those types of apps.

But you might be asking yourself right now whether these types of third party app stores are safe. And the answer is that most of them are but some of them are not. There is no need to hide the truth; some of the app stores will allow black hat hackers to upload dangerous apps that will affect your phone in their app store. That is really bad and something that you should look out for. But in most cases you will find that the app stores are safe and you have nothing to worry about when it comes to your phone and the app that you installed on it.

So pretty much, if you are going to visit third party app stores with your phone then you should read some reviews about the app that you are installing first. And also read some reviews on the app store itself. This way you will be able to see if it is safe or not and you can decide whether you want to avoid it.

Third party app stores make the Android app ecosystem a lot more diverse than the IPhone ecosystem. But with that freedom there comes a little bit of danger as well that you should look out for.