BitTorrent Comes to Cell Phones

An anonymous reader writes "Finally, a BitTorrent interface for the mobile phone. Dubbed uTorrent mUI, the web user interface allows the end user to control torrent downloads remotely. The interface still lacks the ability to add torrents, however bringing BitTorrent capabilities to the cell phone is a giant step forward."

Pretty Misleading

[eldavojohn]

This technology allows the individual to log into their home machine from a remote location and, among many other things, add torrents, pause a download, or discontinue a download.

The title of this article is pretty misleading. It looks like they've basically made a webpage for their BitTorrent and then made a special css for a cell phone viewing it.

Not extremely innovative, I've seen web interfaces for torrent clients [sourceforge.net].

Neat? Yes. A good project? Maybe. "Huge step forward?" Not really, in my opinion.

I question the motives for bringing torrents to cellphones unless you can use other cell phones as download points (hence the name Peer to Peer). That's where the speedup comes from. I think cell phones are pinched at their access point, P2P apps on the phone aren't going to change that, they will even make it worse if both phones are fighting two separate choke points. Not sure if this is well thought out.

Wow...

[Revenge_of_Solver_Ta]

Isn't something like 50% of the net's total traffic (by volume) torrent?

Seems this would really tax wireless capacity.

Re:Wow...

[veganboyjosh]

With all the "who's gonna download crap onto their phone?" posts, this is what occurred to me. Can you use this to schedule/direct torrents to download on another computer? That would be something.

You know, cos getting in on torrents when their streaming is full force is like getting in at the last second on an ebay auction.

Misleading and over-hyped

[Wog]

This would be like setting up a very simple web page to control a nuclear missile silo and proclaiming, "NUCLEAR MISSILES NOW LAUNCHED FROM CELL PHONES!"

All this is is a remote interface, just like the http interface uTorrent already has. Useful? Now for most, but maybe so for some. The fact that you can't add torrents to it is a major limitation, but if you are out with friends and say "So yeah, I hear it's a great film. We can go back to my place and watch it if it's done. Let's see..." then it's a handy little add-on.

Not worth a breathless Slashdot story, though.