ESET announced recently the release of its ESET Mobile Antivirus Public Beta 1 for Symbian OS-based mobile phones. According to the company, the new software solution is meant to offer protection from a wide range of threats for Symbian OS-powered smartphones, while being built upon the ESET NOD32 Antivirus engine, already available for a series of platforms, including Windows Mobile, BSD, Linux and Windows.

ESET's Mobile Antivirus for Symbian OS can be used on handsets running under Symbian S60 3rd Edition, both Feature Pack 1 and Feature Pack 2, and on smartphones powered by Symbian S60 5th Edition. At the same time, it should be noted that the software solution requires 1MB of free memory to run on a Symbian OS-powered handset.

The feature list of the new software solution includes:
- Activation - performed online via graphic user interface.
- Archive Scanning - variable in-depth scanning of archives
- Heuristics - pioneering proactive protection for mobile platforms
- Logs and Statistics - provides information about scanning tasks and virus signature database status as well as a report on scanning history
- On-Access Scanning - scans newly-created and opened files; scanning of files received via Bluetooth, IR and Wi-Fi
- On-Demand Scanning - scans running processes and storage (including specific subfolders); standardized logs

In addition, the ESET Mobile Antivirus has been designed so as to quarantine infected objects, which can be deleted or restored from the quarantine folder, and it also enables users to set automatic updates (which can be performed on a daily, weekly or monthly basis) or to perform manual updates. The user interface of the software solution is friendly and easy-to-use, the company says. It should also be noted that the new ESET Mobile Antivirus for Symbian OS is a beta test version and it can cause errors or crashes. According to the company, only experienced users should install it, especially since it does not come with full functionality and documentation.

ESET Mobile Antivirus for Symbian OS is available for free download via this link.