The seemingly ill-fated series I began over ten months ago for PhoneDog (only to abandon it two months later), DroidWars, is back, baby! And while I can’t promise I’ll stick to a rigid schedule, I plan on posting these pretty regularly – at least until someone gets angry about the name, at which point I’ll tuck it away for a week or two, come up with another predictable phrase, and relaunch it as a new segment!

The original idea behind DroidWars was that I would compare similar, priced apps from the Android Market and not only offer you my personal decision on which was the victor but hopefully provide enough information to facilitate you in formulating preliminary judgments of your own. Occasionally, I like trying out a lot of different apps, but not always. Sometimes I just want to get things done. I hope Droid Wars helps a few people out in that regard. For this segment, I will be including free apps as well as paid, just because there are so many to choose from. In cases of total saturation, it isn’t just the saving of money that makes DroidWars worth while, but the saving of time.

• Probability typing: QWERTED
• DroidWars: Jewellust vs. Bejeweled
• Droid Wars: Torrent Controllers
• DroidWars: Breakout Clones

This section will be updated eventually – hopefully on a weekly basis. For now, check out the episodes I made for PhoneDog.com below.

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Forget the other clones. For this kind of puzzle game, two stand at the top of the heap: Jewellust and Bejeweled.

• DroidWars: Breakout Clones

Head to head to head to head: Torrent Droid, Torrent-fu, Transdroid, and BarTor. This isn’t a full-blown review of any of these apps; just a quick demonstration to see which ones are worth your time. Here’s a hint: save your money and go for the freebies.

The hardest part of using these apps is getting the settings right – like port forwarding. Someone aligned with Torrent Droid has provided a great wiki, which includes setting up a free domain for your IP with no-ip.com (i.e., username.redirectme.net). The Torrent Droid’s home site, Zerofate, is down at the time of this writing. Looks like their service is basically dead as well. Well, Alec Holmes, thanks for starting something great.

• DroidWars: Keyboards – Q1, 2010
• DroidWars: Jewellust vs. Bejeweled
• DroidWars: Breakout Clones

How many Breakout clones are available for Android? A lot, that’s how many. I had to edit out my banter about how a neighbor destroyed my Atari 5200. That’s how many Breakout clones are in the Market – and I didn’t even cover them all.

Here are a couple to look for, and a few others to avoid. BTW, if you can play Droid Breakout using the accelerometer while the reverse power-up is active, I salute you.

• DroidWars: Jewellust vs. Bejeweled