I recently started using my Thumb drive with my smartphone. It’s the drive I always carry in my pocket and use daily in my job.
Android discussion. I have no Iphone experience at all. Iphone users can tell us how they do it.
The capability is known as OTG. Some phones support it and some don’t. You find out by installing the free OTG? app from the Play Store. It will scan your phone and indicate if the hardware supports OTG.
If it does… Then you buy a OTG cable like this. They are inexpensive and can be bought in two packs. It’s always good to have a spare.
Then, you need a software driver for FAT32 and the other Microsoft file system formats. I did some research and the Paragon App is the most stable & commonly used. It recognizes when a USB drive is plugged in and lets you mount the drive. There is a small fee to buy Paragon. You can use a trial version for 2 days.
Finally, you need a File manager App. I’ve used X-plore for three years and it’s compatible with Paragon. Paragon suggests using File Commander. I have no experience with that App. It seems very similar to X-plore.
I did have to associate X-plore with Paragon. A simple step done inside X-plore. (see that Apps help file on OTG)
Then you plug in your ***favorite Thumb/Flash Drive. Most people have at least a half dozen to pick from.
Mount the drive in Paragon
You can play music, videos, view photos, and copy or move files on the Thumb Drive. It’s no different from accessing your phones internal drive.
Use Paragon to Unmount the drive after your done.
***You can buy OTG flash drives that plug directly into the smartphone and eliminate the special cable.
My smartphone (Samsung Galaxy S6) always worked with USB drives, never had to install anything. I have some USB drives with a micro-USB plug, and I bought a few very cheap adaptors so I can plug any USB drive into my phone.
That’s Awesome. It’s good to know Tablets support flash drives too.
My phone running Nougat wouldn’t recognize when I plugged in my Thumb Drive. No response at all.
I had to scramble and do some research for the right App.
btw, there is a risk that you could trash the files on your flash drive. Especially if you have a unreliable FAT system driver. It’s never happened to me, but I saw user comments in the Play Store. They were pretty upset.
I wouldn’t plug in a big External hard drive with a lot of irreplaceable files. Don’t risk it.
Be safe, use a flash drive that doesn’t have any important files. It’s not a big deal to reformat on a PC if needed.
I got one of these card readers, plugged it in & inserted the SD card from my camera so I could read/upload a photo from the field (I’ve never had the WMU software work, & others have issue w/ it, too).
The phone stated I’d need to format the card before using it. Ummm, that would delete the photos on said card. :smack:
I might want to look into this, for the sake of helping my mom with things. She has a desktop computer that works, and is attached to a printer, and a tablet that works, and which can connect to the Internet, but there’s no easy way to transfer anything between the two. Currently, the best I can do is e-mail things from the tablet to me, put it on a thumb drive from my computer, and then plug the thumb drive into her computer, but that means going back and forth between her place and mine.
I have a 4 terabyte wireless, WiFi enabled external drive that I can access from anywhere via the internet. Granted, one does need a good WiFi connection to quickly access the files, but for me it beats carrying around a flash drive all the time.
I haven’t, but I have used the phone itself as a thumb drive to transfer files from a computer to another, when one of them couldn’t connect to the local wifi (client-owned computer and my own computer, client’s wifi). For a couple of those the client’s computer was a desktop pc and we needed to be able to travel the files.
While my DSLR cameras can, theoretically, connect to wi-fi, they can’t connect directly to the internet. I can’t email a pic directly from the camera as it has no browser or app capability.
It’s obvious you spend all of your time in a city or suburbs. There are still lots of rural areas that don’t even have cell phone signal. I was just in a state park two weeks ago that has no connectivity unless you’re in the visitors center (Verizon gets one bar at the top of the park, other cell providers don’t get that much). Similar with the drive to/from; lots of time w/o basic call / cell service let alone internet.
I don’t, but my dad got one that had a plug for his phone. There was no obvious way to use it until we found an app on the Google Play Store. He doesn’t really use it much, but he likes the idea of it.
I just use an SD card. If the computer has a slot for it, great. If not, I can plug the phone in with a USB cord and use it that way. I haven’t had an actual flashdrive in ages.
Yeah, I wracked my brain trying to think of an instance I’d need a thumb drive…even with my computer these days. Nuthin’
I now see the digital camera comment below, and I guess that makes sense. My phone has been my camera for many years now, so that didn’t occur to me either.
Point the 1st - I don’t live in the city, I live on a farm - albeit one with 2 Wifi options.
Point the 2nd - the OP isn’t about cameras, it is about cell phones. Different animals, different advice. With a camera one does still run into situation where removable storage of some type makes perfect sense. I still wouldn’t plug it into my phone.
I don’t have a need for this functionality. There is enough space on my phone to hold all my music, I don’t like watching videos on a small screen, and I live in a major city so my regular connection is always fast enough to stream video if I really want to.
I’ve tried a flash drive on my Android phone, as well as keyboard and mouse (you actually get a mouse pointer on your phone screen!) Since my phone already supports a 64GB SDCard I’ve never really had a need to attach a flash drive in everyday use.
