My next phone

android-usb I have a Motorola Milestone and on the whole I’ve been happy with it. There have been a few issues which affect me (all introduced by Motorola themselves) but hopefully these will get resolved with the next software update, and of course I’m very much hoping that Froyo hits my device.

The camera is poor though, so when my contract is up in a year’s time, that will be a requirement.

More pressingly though, I’m finding that I have more and more portable devices that support USB (pen drives, external hard drives, cameras, mp3 players, my kindle-of-the-future), and I want my phone to act as a host for these. It is, after all, my always-on, always-with-me computer, and has all the apps I need to manage those devices and a wifi connection so I can up- or download any bits that I need.

As far as I know, none of the Android devices come with it supported natively, but people have got host mode working on both the Nexus One, Milestone and Hero using custom kernels. The Nokia N800 and N8 seem to do it out of the box:

N800: Ultimate Portable USB Host

Increasingly, my laptop is a barrier to doing things like getting photos online. I realise I could get an eye-fi or something similar, but that also takes away a level of flexibility and pre-upload functionality that my phone gives me.

Here’s hoping it’s a popular or common feature in a year’s time!