philwilson.org

My next phone

01 August, 2010

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!

See other posts tagged with android general usb and all posts made in August 2010.

Comments

jrhyley
02 August, 2010 at 07:08

With the N1’s 5 megapixels, my phone *is* my camera. Between apps to upload to facebook, twitter, wordpress, flickr, and tumblr (most of which also support email uploads with no app required) it does become a three-click process. It is the future. It is glorious.

Phil
02 August, 2010 at 07:10

Yeah, all my phones for the past four years or so have been 5MP but the lens on the milestone/droid is vastly inferior compared to my old carlzeiss-sporting N95. I assume the N1 also has one of these. The editing facilities on android are pretty good, and all those apps are available here too, but I’ve clearly been spoiled by the quality of my nokia device.