Torrent for Dummies

Posted by Laurent Meyer at 19:06 0 comments  

My first tutorial in English :

Hope you'll find cool !

Posted by Laurent Meyer at 17:58 0 comments  

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As I'm a big fan of this little green guy called Android (who eats apples with a great pleasure !), I suggest you a paper speaking about way of downloading some torrents directly from your Android device.
This paper is certainly not written in order to drive you at the moment you have to choose but only to inspect all possibilities of each torrent client and compare the strong and weak points of each.
After a long discussion, we've decided to select 3 clients : these are tested in their free (or lite) version in order to be on an equal footing.
The phone used is a Nexus S Jelly Bean which has been rebooted at factory settings. Internet connection is a German one (32Mo/s). Moreover, I won't test torrent remote (software allowing you to control your PC or seedbox) but only softwares that are able to download directely from the Internet and stock downloaded datas in your phone or tablet.
So, as I said, we've tested three clients which have been downloaded many millions of times.

Presentation of the apps :

The first in this list is called aTorrent, it is, as far back as I can remember, the oldest client on Android devices. Its lite version is available on the Play Store of Google (I'll only test its lite version).


After comes, in alphabetical order, certainly one of the most famous client torrent client on PC : Bittorrent. It is one of pioners of torrent exchanges. It's the only one which is totally free : no ads and no paid version.

And, last but not least, Ttorrent, available in 2 versions : one paid and one free. As I said, I'll test the free one.
I hope that with money I'll earn with this blog (if you share it !) due to the of ads, I'll be able to buy and test all paid versions available on Google Play Store. Maybe, if it works really well, i'll do a test about remote ! With a HUGE test ! :)

Way of testing :

Three tests will define which client is the best : one will be UI (User Interface), one will be options available on each app and the last criterion we'll deal with the speed of downloading.

UI :

All clients have approximately the same UI : 3 Tabs : Search/Home Page, Downloading, Downloaded.
aTorrent is, I think, the worst UI but, in spite of this defect, it's very understandable and clear.


Ttorrent is more elegant and smarter.

Bittorrent has the UI I prefer : it's really easy to use and very smooth (with cool transitions...). Also, on Bittorent, there are not that many buttons so it's easier if you download from a small smartphone. An other thing about this UI, is the "add-torrent" button placed in the upper right-hand corner ; it's well planned.

Options :

For the options, Bittorent is certainly the weakest, maybe because of the fact that it is only a totally free version (remember it's ad-free !). It has only few options like auto-start (start with Android device), bandwith limitations and an option that allows you to change TCP port.
aTorrent is much more complete : it offers bandwith limitation, enable or disable 3G or WiFi downloads, it also have an automatic start option and a possibility to allow (or not) seeding torrents and the most interesting is, in my opinion, an option which can block active torrents if the device works on battery.


And the most complete is tTorrent which is also, I guess, the most complicated for beginners. Even in its lite version, it can control your bandwith allocation (CAUTION : lite version download only until 250KBits/s !), control of number of active seeds & active downloads (maxi for version lite is 12 active), you can also change default reception folder, manage your RSS feeds, enable torrents downloads only if WiFi is enabled, change ports, and even more cmplicated options like DHT, UPnP, NATPMP, IP filtering and Proxy ! An other very important option is that your research doesn't appear in an Internet window but directly in the programm ; that's much faster.




For those who, maybe haven't read the whole part about the options, let's look at this tab !

Performances :

aTorrent is the fastest torrent client on Android : for magnets links, it can beat my Computer (I5 2500 K) if the net is strong enough.
For classic torrent files, it is a bit faster but all three can be used without any difference. Important too, private trackers aren't supported by these clients : they can't manage identification on a private tracker.


Crosses mean that downloading isn't possible.

Times are an average between ten downloads  with same phone, same files (for each tracker), and approximately same net. Also number and power of seeders is approximately the same.

Conclusion :

If you're a real geek, you would prefer aTorrent, with a black and not very welcoming UI and a very fast torrent client.
If you're concerned by the look of an app, I advise to choose you tTorrent. It's a cool UI and a complete client.
And if you begin with torrents and you are affraid of doing something wrong with options, let's take Bittorrent, very easy and very clear.

Thanks for reading

Laurent Meyer (@lolobosse)

Posted by Laurent Meyer at 16:13 0 comments