Tutorials

How to connect usb flash drive to your android smartphone or tablet

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In this tutorial we are going to explain how to connect a USB flash drive to your smartphone or tablet on Android operating systems. The key is to use a USB OTG (On-The-Go) cable . In this way, you can transfer the files from the smartphone to the flash drive and vice versa.

How to connect USB flash drive to an Android device

If you find yourself in need of a more practical solution to back up photos and videos on your smartphone without having to connect your smartphone to a computer, there is now a good alternative.

What is a USB OTG cable?

A USB OTG cable is made up of a micro USB input and another USB port (female - Type A), which allows the smartphone to function as “Host”. You can buy an OTG cable at a computer store near where you live or through internet stores.

Using this cable is fairly simple for most smartphones and tablets with a micro USB or even mini USB port. However, not all devices will easily accept it.

In addition to this, there are several smartphones and tablets that need a " USB Y cable " for connecting external power. This is because some manufacturers disable the power output function on the micro USB port of smartphones, and without power some devices will not work with the OTG cable.

In these cases, you must buy a USB cable AND that has a micro USB port to connect to the smartphone or tablet, a USB 2.0 port to connect the peripherals you want to use on the smartphone or tablet and a male USB port to connect anywhere that provides 5V of power for the peripheral, like a USB port on a computer.

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Is connecting a flash drive to a smartphone an easy process? Of course. You connect the cable to the mini USB port of the smartphone, you connect your USB stick to the female USB port, you go to the file manager of the smartphone and voila: the files on your USB stick are there so you can open them or copy them from your mobile to pendrive.

Anything else? You can use the keyboard and wireless mouse on the smartphone , which ends up being a great thing, the keyboard and mouse running on the same USB adapter! Thus, the smartphone will look like a mini computer, with the mouse pointer and keyboard as used on a desktop computer. This is very handy for writing long texts effortlessly with a text editor on your smartphone.

You can also try connecting a printer, but you will surely have to install a print driver on your mobile phone through the Printers menu in the smartphone settings.

It is noteworthy that the OTG cable also allows you to connect cameras and other peripherals directly to your smartphone or tablet. In this way you could for example:

  • Connect the keyboard of the PC to the smartphone to create documents. Swipe the photos of the camera directly from the smartphone or tablet. Browse the Android system with the mouse (seeing the cursor), even when the touch screen does not work. And many other devices…

Connect the pendrive to the smartphone

First of all, it is necessary to check if the smartphone (or tablet) is compatible with OTG technology. To do this, start by downloading the USB OTG Checker application directly from the application store, and click on the “Check Device on USB OTG” option.

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In case the USB OTG Checker checks the compatibility of your device, just connect the cable to your smartphone (or tablet) and connect the USB stick to the tip of the female USB port.

If all goes well, your Android will automatically recognize the connected device.

How to access the files on the flash drive?

To access the files on the flash drive, you will need to have a file explorer on your smartphone. In this case we recommend the ES File Explorer or File Commander applications.

What if the device is not compatible?

If your device is not supported, some additional steps are necessary, which involve rooting your Android device. You can root your Android with the Kingo Root program (free), for example.

To finish, it will be necessary to install the USB OTG Helper application that will help you mount the external device on your Android. What did you think of our tutorial how to connect a USB flash drive to your Android smartphone or tablet ? We want to know your opinion!

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