Nexus One vs. Top 10 Phone Security Requirements

hiouridah writes "Consumer Grade or Enterprise Ready? The Nexus One is entering a smart phone market that is taking increasing heat from enterprises for their lack of robust security features. So how does the Nexus One stack up?"

Comments

N1 vs Iphone

[Karganeth]

521MB RAM vs 256MB RAM
800x480 vs 480x320
1Ghz vs 600Mhz
5MP vs 3MP
AMOLED vs TFT

To top it off the nexus one is a slimmer device. Need I say anymore? The iPhone is no longer king! Hoorah!

For those who don't want to skim TFA

[DJRumpy]

Screen Lock (including gestures to unlock in addition to alphanumeric codes)
VPN support
Standard Wireless Support (Wireless-N as well which is nice)
Application Sandboxing
Lacks Corporate Policy Enforcement (fail for enterprise)
Application Signing - Doesn't require trusted signers which defeats the purpose
No hardware encryption (fail for enterprise)
No Remote Wipe (fail for enterprise)

IMO, the phone definitely seems ready for the home user, but is very lacking for enterprise

King? iPhone Is The 3rd Place Phone

[MediaStreams]

http://www.intomobile.com/2009/11/12/apple-iphone-takes-third-place-in-q3-global-smartphone-sales.html

Nokia is the king.
RIM behind them.

And finally Apple in third place. So, no, Apple and iPhone isn't the king of anything in the cellphone market.

Re:King? iPhone Is The 3rd Place Phone

[Patch86]

And no consumers want choice, right? People much prefer to compromise on what they want from a product because of a limited product line, obviously!

(Nokia sells a range of different devices filling a whole range of price and hardware niches. Seeing as their combined range outsells Apples combined range by a considerable amount, I'd guess it's a strategy which is serving them pretty well).

Re:RIM's bread and butter

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice try.. As per this post, Blackberry backed-down and allowed Indian Government to snoop BB users.

http://www.engadget.com/2008/05/22/rim-allows-indian-government-to-monitor-blackberry-network/

Nexus One vs iPhone 3Gs vs. N900

[Hurricane78]

I’m sure if you ask the Japanese, they will laugh in your face. But a quick comparison:

Nexus One vs iPhone vs. N900

CPU: 1GHz Qualcomm SnapDragon | 600 Mhz ARM Cortex-A8 + PowerVR SGX | 600 MHz ARM Cortex-A8 + PowerVR SGX
RAM: 512MB | 256MB | 1GB
Display: 800x480 AMOLED | 480x320 TFT | 800x480 TFT
Camera: 5 MP, LED flash | 3 MP, no flash | 5 MB + 0.3 MP (dual), LED flash | (All without optical zoom, which in this day and age, is pathetic.)
Storage: 4 GB + unlimited | 16 GB (fixed) | 32 GB + unlimited
Battery: 1400 mAh | 1219 mAh (non-removable) | 1320 mAh | (all 3.7 V li-ion)
Input: capacitive touchscreen + trackball | multi-touch touchscreen | resistive touchscreen + 38-key backlit keyboard
OS: Android | iPhone OS | Maemo Linux
Dimensions: 119 * 59.8 * 11.5 mm | 115.5 * 62.1 * 12.3 mm | 110.9 * 59.8 * 18 mm
Java support: yes | no | yes
GPS: They all got A-GPS and Wi-Fi triangulation is possible with a software. Although from what I heard, the iPhone has that software built-in. (I bought it for 3€ for my Nokia, so not much trouble there.)
Ability to put on it and do with it what you want: likely | locked down | absolutely
FM radio: no | no | yes

That’s about the differences I could make out. I hope this gives a better picture. I tried to stay unbiased. (And I’m sure I will draw hate for this. ;) As always: No guarantees.

Re:Nexus One vs iPhone 3Gs vs. N900

[jspenguin1]

The N900 has 256MB actual RAM, plus 768MB swap on an internal MMC card. It has to have more memory because unlike the iPhone and Android, applications must be explicitly closed (by closing the window) before they are unloaded.

The internal storage card is split into three partitions: 2GiB app storage, 768MiB swap, 25GiB user. The reason the app storage is separate is because it is formatted ext3, but the user storage must be formatted FAT for Windows hosts to access it through USB Mass Storage. Some applications (games, mostly) do install large data files there, though.

Re:Nexus One vs iPhone 3Gs vs. N900

[Anonymous Coward]

I hate to be a party pooper, but with respect to the N900:
RAM: my N900 only has 256MB of RAM. The other 768 is swap!
Camera: The front camera is disabled and should be discounted until such time as nokia actually releases firmware supporting it to the public.
Storage: SDHC is not unlimited
Software: The official Ovi store is not open yet, and maemo-extras is kinda slow on the community approval. Apps are supposed to install to /opt, but many forget or fail to optify everything so the tiny flash / slowly fills up. There's a large backlog of software from previous devices not yet ported to Maemo5, if ever.

There are some unmentioned advantages; the n900 has tv out, and an IR emitter. And we get Fennec, so yay.

Re:RIM's bread and butter

[Anonymous Coward]

I doubt its because of security soley. Its the BES management features that really sell it. Centralized policies, remote wipes, etc. Security is only part of that.

True.

The BB system relies on your pumping your mail to Ontario and BB's getting it from Ontario.

Not true. RIM does have NOCs around the world.

Its not a direct connection to the BES server in your enterprise. So any outtage in Ontario means an outtage for you.

Not everyone goes through the Ontario NOC, although North America does.

Not sure how good of an idea that is, especially since Android and other Activesync phones connect straight to your mail server just like any email client, and not through BB's proxies, which can be compromised.

The beauty of the Blackberry Enterprise Server platform is that it doesn't matter if RIM's infrastructure is compromised. The encryption keys are located in two places: on the blackberry, and on your Blackberry Enterprise Server, which runs on a server in your office. RIM does not have the keys to decrypt. The cell phone carrier does not have the keys to decrypt.

That is part of the reason the Blackberry Enterprise Server platform has been audited & received so many security certifications: http://na.blackberry.com/eng/ataglance/security/certifications.jsp

How many security certifications does the iphone have? Android? Nokia? I strongly suspect the answer is none.

Not everyone needs the level of security offered by Blackberry, but some of us do.

Sure they use end to end security but how feasible are MITM attacks?

Once a blackberry is activated with a Blackberry Enterprise Server, not possible. You can even set up the key exchange between the Blackberry Enterprise Server & the blackberry over a usb cable - hard to spoof that.

Re:RIM's bread and butter

[ArhcAngel]

Thanks, for some reason Google failed me. But it would probably be better to direct to the actual article rather than a tech blog about the article...

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/RIM_agrees_to_pass_BlackBerry_content_on_condition/rssarticleshow/3056271.cms

from the article:

"The encrypted data packets sent through BlackBerry are password protected and could be deciphered only with the help of "Public Key" and "Private Key" together. The other provision is to build a super computer, which could take nearly three years and the results beyond a certain frequency were not guaranteed.

So yeah they "helped" the Indian government snoop but hardly gave them a master key.

Re:4 real issues

[Enderandrew]

If I recall (and I can be mistaken) the big issue is that the iPhone can only do encryption one-way when syncing. Apple was literally bidding on a government contract for iPhone usage in the military, and the bid got thrown out when that was uncovered.

Oddly enough, Apple has still yet to fix the issue.

Re:At least he avoided using "sheeple"

[indiechild]

The universe doesn't revolve around the US.