FrostWire for Android brings quick, slick P2P file sharing to your phone

Please ignore previous comment, which was automatically inserted from 1password (no idea why)
just wanted to notify that the app says on their page that you can pay if you want, but i don t see any other option to get the app for free as claimed

If your phone is able to install 3rd party apps (i.e. not from the Android Market), you can just visit the link in your phone's browser, download the APK from the "Free Download" link and install from there (I just did this).

The application was built initially to share files locally on a Wi-Fi network. There's plenty of legal use in this respect. Take pictures, video and music from your phone and transfer it to a tablet, or your Google TV. Teachers and Students sharing files in campus, go to a conference and the speaker can share the powerpoint slides with the audience, and so on.

The application is not meant to run over 2G or 3G, it's stated clearly on the market, and the team has been very adamant about this since the start of the project, why? 1) Carrier Rules 2) Connections are too slow and unreliable and this would only hurt the network.

Maybe when 4G support is widely available and the carriers are ok with p2p FrostWire for Android will enable connectivity outside Wi-Fi.

Team FrostWire

There are actually Bit Torrent clients that will allow you to download P2P directly to your phone - not just control your PC client

@Sebastian Anthony

Here are several case uses we've envisioned for a long time. However, most of them will only come to fruition if the application's adoption rate is ubiquitous on all android phones.

0. Partying, dinner with friends. How many times have you gone out with friends, now everybody has smartphones with decent cameras but your friends are too lazy to email them or even put the pictures on facebook, maybe you'll see those pictures of that memorable night out 3 months later on facebook if you're lucky. With FrostWire, right after you finish party and you head out to eat a slice of pizza at 3am in the morning, usually every pizza/caffe/restaurant joint has open wi-fi, while you eat, instead of not talking to each other because you're texting or sending email (like it happens in many dinner tables across the world), you could all actually look at the screen of your phone while connecting to each other.

1. Cafe/Bar/Restaurant/Airports - If there's a Wi-Fi network that has a relaxed administration policy (no peer isolation, UDP broadcast enabled, UDP multicast enabled), then peers can connect and share.

When you look at the text box on the Chat, it says "Break the ice". We think the most social device that we have is our phone, but it's mostly thought of as a remote social interaction device (phone calls, email, etc). We thought that maybe we're not the only socially awkward people in the world, hey, if you have a smartphone nowadays probably you're a bit geekish and when you find your self in a room full of hundreds of people (say some tech event, party, etc) You're probably going to be wandering around eating the free food and looking at your phone, tweeting what you're doing.

We think these are great occassions for those of us that are super extroverted online but introverted in real life to connect to others, that's where the FrostWire for Android Chatroom kicks in. It's a great way to break the ice, and I can envision people in bars maybe even hooking up anonymously from their phones before making actual contact, browsing each other's pictures, checking their musical taste, etc.

2. Say there's no Wi-Fi hotspot around, but there's a powerful Android running 2.2. That Android could become the access point for phones around and they could connect. I envision for example people in NYC riding say the front or back cars of the train to see if they can hook up with strangers and exchange files.

3. A hipster Indie Band from Williamsburg making a break during the middle of the show in a bar, and taking out an android phone and saying, "If you guys have FrostWire, go ahead and download these demo tracks on my phone", bam.

4. The amount of videos and pictures I have of my baby daughter outweights the number of other files I have on my phone, I'm sure this is a reality for many parents with Android phones, and you can certainly download a lot of pictures and videos like this from other people. You need a way to share this content in a fast and convenient way, sometimes I dread thinking of looking for the USB cable, mounting, etc. I just want to copy the files to my wife's or my mom's phone, now they can download these pictures en-masse, I don't have to attach them and email them. This also gives you a great level of privacy, not everything should go through the internet, now it can be done at a personal level.

(Currently we're working on a mechanism to transfer files wirelessly from the phone to FrostWire for Desktop, so it'll be a great tool for syncing files wirelessly to your phone. That's another great legal use of both FrostWire for Android and FrostWire for desktop)

5. Podcasts. One thing people tend to carry on their mobile mp3 playback device is podcasts, do a search for podcast and you'll find tons of great podcasts, we think this is a a great legal use of p2p technology and it helps content creators save bandwidth. (We're working on tools to help podcasters distribute their podcasts without paying a dime in bandwidth as well)

As for the illegal use, we condemn illegal downloading, we think that in fact there's way more free content out there that needs to be discovered (count how many indie bands are in myspace, vs popular signed artists..., being popular on p2p is not easy either but we try to expose as much great content as possible), and that's why we have initiatives like FrostClick.com and promotions of Creative Contents material on FrostWire for desktop.

Also, I wanted to thank you for this review, we think it's actually the best so far (other than the conclusion on piracy, we're trying to get away from that bad shadow ever since we started the FrostWire project, we think P2P, as technologies like the tape, VHS, and CDs, has to mature and we all need to start looking at it from other perspectives than just P2P = Piracy, file sharing is only the beginning of what p2p can do)

Cheers

I just got the app so explain this in simple terms i have to be on the same wi fi network as someone else and they have to have the app and what im looking for ??

Actually, the iPhone OS used to have a Soulseek P2P client back in the days of 1.x.x (around 2008 or so): http://torrentfreak.com/islsk-brings-file-sharing-to-iphone-080515/