Description: FrostWire is a free Android app that’s both a full featured BitTorrent client and a cloud file downloader in one. With build in search, it gives you quick access to millions of files: music, movies, images, software – even e-books. Of course, many of you will remember FrostWire as the P2P client for the Gnutella network. Years ago FrostWire dropped the aging technology on both desktop and android and moved to faster and safer torrent/straight http downloading option. The project also promotes legitimately free albums from up and coming musicians and features other Creative Commons licensed content for free, right on the search screen. FrostWire for Android works well on both 3G/4G and Wi-Fi connection allowing you to limit your downloading & seeding to Wi-Fi only, so you don’t have to worry about going over your data limits on mobile. It also features a simplified media browser and even an audio player. Being an open source application built and maintained by the users of the software, it’s nice to see this app on Android, itself an open platform. A complete solution for getting your hands on digital files, is FrostWire what you were looking for?
How it Works: To get started with FrostWire, you’ll first need to download it from the Play Store. Once you open up FrostWire, you’ll have to agree to the terms and conditions.
After that, you’ll be asked to tweak a few settings before you start downloading things.
Up and coming music artists are often showcased by the FrostWire app and it’s well worth taking a look at, especially if you want to support independent artists.
Searching for things using the app is nice and easy and once you have your results you can sort them by file type, such as music, video, images, software, documents, and of course torrents.
With a simple and modern pull out menu, you can take a look at your ongoing transfers and even browse the media on your device.
The transfers display is nice and sophisticated and will give you a good gauge of speed and ETA at a simple glance.
Opinion: FrostWire is a great app for those looking to download any file using torrents on their Android smartphones or tablets. It also works as a great tool to find new artists or get access to some media you might not otherwise stumble upon. Of course, it goes without saying that those looking to get pirated content through FrostWire should be careful and in fact, the app actively discourages you from doing so. As a torrent client this works well and you don’t have to be a real tech savvy user to know what you’re doing either. Built using modern app design, there’s little that FrostWire doesn’t have on offer.
Ratings
- Speed (4/5) – FrostWire is a fast app that handles searches as well and doesn’t have any issue downloading multiple files.
- Features (4/5) – A good search engine, the ability to download and upload multiple files and more makes FrostWire one of the better apps like this on offer for Android.
- Theme (4/5) – Built using modern standards, FrostWire is a tasteful app and acts much the way you would expect it to.
- Overall (4/5) – Torrents still have a place in the world of Netflix and Spotify, and FrostWire ticks most of the boxes that people will be looking for.
Pros
- In app search for torrents and other media files bringing wide variety of content for easy download
- Easily toggled settings for connection type and seeding, spelled out in plain English for those not too savvy.
- Modern design makes FrostWire a good-looking and easy to use app for those looking to download any content on their Android device.
- Allows multiple downloads and multiple uploads (seeding), without struggling with either.
- Works well on both smartphones and tablets.
Cons
- Wi-Fi file transfer between computer and mobile device can be buggy, but this is a free and open source app.
- Relies on fast internet connection for obvious reasons, so you might have to wait a while for GB large files to download
Conclusion: FrostWire is a great app when looking for music and movies, but it’s also an excellent and simple BitTorrent client. Complex apps like FrostWire aren’t easy to run on so many different devices, so you might get a few issues here and there, but the dev team is pretty responsive if you email their support with questions or issues. Easy to use, clear, honest and good for up and coming artists, FrostWire is well worth a download if you’ve tried other avenues or you just need a great BitTorrent client for Android.