Norton now on tablets--and in your wallet

Norton Tablet Security While some iphone app makers are taking a unified approach to Android, Norton has decided to split its security applications into a phone version and a tablet version. Norton Tablet Security debuted today as Symantec also released a minor update to Norton Mobile Security, its smartphone version. Norton Tablet Security is an updated version of Symantec's Android app, Norton Mobile Security. The Tablet Security version comes with an interface optimized for Android tablets. This means that rather than presenting its features in a narrow column, its interface is in a widescreen format. Like its smartphone counterpart, Tablet Security offers anti-malware for scanning apps; Web protection, which uses Norton's Safe Web technology for protecting against malicious and fraudulent sites loaded in the default Android browser; and Web-based anti-theft measures, which allows users to protect their device after it's been lost. Norton Mobile Security, with Scream now The anti-theft options involve logging into a Web site, from which you can lock the device then, add a custom "device lost" message to the lockscreen, and track the device on a map. A clever "sneak peek" feature lets you take a image using the device's front-facing camera, which then uploads it to an anti-theft site that displays and stores the picture. The updated Norton Mobile Security application for phones now comes with a "scream" option, which forces the phone to emit a high-decibel siren. Good for irritating thieves, it's also not a bad way to find your phone when it's slipped under the couch cushions. A one-year license to Norton Tablet Security comes at the steep price of $39.99 for one year, while a one-year Norton Mobile Security license costs $29.99, much closer to what other publishers with Android security software charge. Symantec stressed that the pricing falls in with their product line, which continues at $39.99 for Norton Anti-Virus, $59.99 for Norton Internet Security, and $79.99 for Norton 360. Still, $40 a year a tablet security iphone app strikes me as more than most of the people will be willing to spend to protect a tablet when competition rarely break the $30 per year mark.