The technology discussed in this issue of the Gazebo is familiar to many owners of smartphones and tablets, however, not everyone uses its potential. Let's get acquainted with a small review, which reveals the possibility of replacing memory cards with drives with USB OTG support.
USB On-The-Go as a technology is nothing new or revolutionary. In fact, it appeared in 2001, even before the advent of smartphones. Nokia used OTG in some Symbian-based devices, and the first one iPhone was not announced yet. Nevertheless, let's return to today and answer the question – is OTG relevant in the context of the trend towards the transition to the USB Type C connector and whether we should expect OTG support in new devices.
What is USB OTG?
Support for the aforementioned technology means that your smartphone can act as the master device in the bundle via the USB interface, which means the ability to determine the devices connected to the smartphone. In other words, you can connect any supported device from a wide selection of USB peripherals to your phone.
An obvious plus of this technology is that you no longer need to connect to a PC to perform simple operations. You can directly access the contents of the flash drive memory from the phone and transfer information to the flash drive using the phone's file manager.
Is this a software or hardware feature?
To use OTG, your device must support the technology in both software and hardware. Accordingly, one should not expect the appearance of technology support from the next smartphone software update. If the device supports OTG only at the hardware level, but the necessary software and drivers are missing, then there is a possibility of achieving stable operation with the help of advice from representatives of the user community.
How do I know if my device supports USB OTG?
Supporting the technology alone will do nothing. You will need to additionally purchase a cable or USB OTG drive. So, if you are not sure that your smartphone has support for this technology, then, first of all, you need to find information on the Internet. This is the fastest and easiest way. Alternatively, you can use one of the applications from the Play directory, for example, USB OTG Checker or USB Host Diagnostics, however, you need an OTG cable. At the same time, many similar applications provide a list of supported devices.
What does 'partial' OTG support mean?
As mentioned, the hardware device can support OTG, but the lack of the necessary software will prevent you from taking advantage of the technology. In this case, you can get root access and use applications such as USB OTG Helper to activate the technology. Then, you need to launch one of the mentioned applications and check if you have access to files using a reliable file manager.
Can USB OTG replace memory cards?
Google is no longer the only manufacturer to stop using memory cards. Even Samsung, the most outspoken advocate and patron of storage users, has not included memory card support in the Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge, according to the company, for performance reasons. Similar arguments were followed in Xiaomi when they refused to use a memory card in Mi4i. For such devices, USB OTG may well become an alternative, as the manufacturers themselves say.
From my own experience: I 'consume' a lot of information and used OTG very heavily in the past. It was always convenient to have important videos on a portable drive, but recently I have not used OTG even on devices with 16 GB of memory. No, I do not always have access to the fast internet that would allow me to store all my files in the cloud. The thing is, phones are getting more powerful and the need to toss data back and forth is reduced as small files and documents are stored securely in Google Drive. At home, I can always cast content from my phones to my big screen TV via Chromecast or Teewe. The last time I used OTG was when I needed to download files from a friend's computer.
Of course, this approach may not suit all users. But still, smartphones are becoming more powerful, Internet coverage is wider, and most importantly, our knowledge and skills in communicating with smartphones are expanding. Mostly USB OTG is unnecessary, although on the other hand, you always want to have free space on the device. In addition to this functionality, you can also use OTG to connect a keyboard or 'mouse' to the device, but, again, most users are rather skeptical about this scenario, preferring to use desktop PCs if necessary.
Conclusion
USB OTG is an excellent option for big fans to 'consume' various multimedia content from their devices, but in modern conditions the lack of technology support is not perceived as a complete fiasco. Of course, many users find OTG to be a useful technology and the number is quite large.
Original article by Deepak Singh.
Elir: like this, in mid-sentence, the author decided to end his story. However, if you think about it, then in general you can try to replace the usual memory cards with USB OTG drives. “Where is the guarantee that USB OTG will not affect the operation of the device's system?” Readers will ask. A logical question, but still memory cards, in my opinion, have more access to the system than a peripheral device. The risk, of course, will be, but less, because At a hint of malware, the drive can be turned off immediately, while unwanted software on the memory card has time to 'mess things up'. My opinion is that the future is by no means for OTG, but rather for cloud storage. In the comments, I propose to share my experience with USB OTG and compare similar drives with SD cards, not paying attention to the impending disappearance of memory cards from smartphones.