One of the utilities you aren’t going to find in iTunes is a fully featured BitTorrent client. While BitTorrent doesn’t have the best reputation in mainstream media, not all torrents constitute piracy and not all piracy occurs over BitTorrent. A good BitTorrent client is handy to have, and their absence on iTunes provides savvy users with another reason to jailbreak.
iTransmission 3 isn’t just an update of the popular iOS BitTorrent client with support for iOS 6 thrown in. The jailbreak app comes complete with an improved UI, an updated backend, and exclusive compatibility with iOS 6…
iTransmission 3’s main screen.
The interface in iTransmission 3 has thankfully been simplified. There’s a screen on the main page for monitoring your transfers, and a banner along the bottom to access all the functions. The banner includes buttons for adding torrents, refreshing the display, setting limits on bandwidth use, and a link for other preferences and settings.
Unfortunately iTransmission 3’s interface currently lacks support for the iPad’s large display; a feature I already miss from iTransmission 2. I really like being able to manage my downloads from my iPad’s big screen, so I made do with FullForce.
iTransmission 3 accepts direct magnet links, as well as any torrents you can access through the built-in web browser. I was able to access my Humble Bundle account through the browser. All I had to do was click on the link for a torrent file to start a download, and it appears in my transfers.
On a good torrent, iTransmission 3 is wickedly fast. I snagged the Retina resolution copy of Signal To Noise, a 54MB PDF, in just under three minutes on a modest DSL connection. Obviously speeds will depend on the number of seeds and peers you can connect to, but the software itself seems to be capable.
As you would expect, there are options for limiting the maximum number of connections, connections per torrent, upload and download limits, and the ability to set whether you want the app to use Wi-Fi or Cellular. If you have any kind of data caps from your ISP, you will want to monitor the limits you set closely.
You can find iTransmission 3 in the ModMyi repo in Cydia. The app is completely free.
Do you think iTransmission 3 is a step up from the previous version? Let us know in the comments section.
