So, here’s the next instalment in my series of adventures LARPing as a 80s nerd.
Sorry bro, I need to see pictures of things (mostly big breasted midgets, of course :lol: ), the command line doesn’t cut it.
So I sometimes use my smartphone.
650 words
An ancient HTC Pico/Explorer.
3.2″ screen, 480×320, 1 core, 600 MHz, 512 MB RAM, ridiculously small amount of internal storage (storage that the user can use is like 150 MBytes, so mount2SD or an analogous trick is a must)
Currently running some ROM I found around xdaforums, Android ICS 4.0.4, with a 3.0.101 kernel.
Hey, it works great for what I use it for.
It’s my GPS when I go for a walk.
Just perfect for that, the 3.2″ screen is big enough to read well, small enough to fit in any pocket, it lasts a few hours on a charge recording a track on OruxMaps.
It also doubles as mp3 player on my walks when I don’t use the gps. (which is rarely, I need the GPS to tell me my average speed at all times, for whatever reason)
As I said the old, outdated phone is almost perfect for my needs.
WARNING: this is not a fair review of any of those programs. Unless you, like me, are using a very old and slow smartphone (1 core, under 1GHz). In that case they might be helpful guiding you to a usable torrent client.
I repeat: if you have a modern smartphone do not use this text as a guidance.
All the programs were…
“Hey grandpa, it’s apps, not programs!!”
Get off my lawn!!!
Damn kids.
Continuing, all of the programs were used in their free versions.
Flud: Started great, added a torrent (a bit slow, but hey, it’s a very slow smartphone), downloaded the first torrent (<20MB) pretty well.
So I added another one, everything seemed great.
Until I looked at the speed, it would go up to 2xx KBytes/s then slowly drop down to nearly 0 and then start rising again. Rinse repeat.
Tried only having one torrent at a time, same crap.
libretorrent: Blank screen at start. Wouldn’t go further no matter how much I waited. (waited over 5 minutes)
Tried re-installing, same thing.
Torrentex: Started well, interface was pretty responsive, added a torrent, downloaded great, added a second one and all hell broke loose.
Constant “App not responding” warnings.
Oh, well, onwards!
zetaTorrent: A lumbering beast, includes a in-app web browser and a bunch of other stuff.
Adding torrents is stupidly slow (so is the smartphone).
Strangely despite the slowness it was one of the better performing ones.
Got decent speeds, quite stable. (Over 8 hours running a torrent and no crashing or anything)
But the slowness gets tiring when it takes almost a minute to add a torrent and you need to add a total of 30-40 torrents.
Verdict: Slow but stable, usable.
aTorrent: Newest version doesn’t work on Android 4.0.4.
That’s a good start. LOL
Grabbed a previous version.
Started well, surprisingly you can add multiple torrents at once, which seems to be a rare feature.
Reasonably fast at adding torrents, but starts crapping out as you had more torrents.
Has the same speed problem as Flud.
tTorrent: Start was kinda slow, interface is simple and responsive.
Settings are decent.
How the hell do I add a torrent? Maybe this button?! “Add magnet link” (insert magnets meme)
Is there no way to add torrents?
Wait, “Filebrowser”.
Sheeeeeeeiiiiiittttt…there it is, seems like tTorrent also allows to add multiple torrents at once, albeit the torrent adding is a bit counter intuitive.
But hell, it worked.
It was a bit slow and had some “App not responding” errors when I added 14 torrents at once.
The speeds are a bit jumpy (and slow at best).
It still works and moves well with 18 torrents on (some paused, 2 downloading 6 seeding).
I guess I found the right one for me.
I think it’s safe to say tTorrent is the light-weightiest torrent client for Android.
See you next post.