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newsOTG Flash stick works great with phone
I know that for many people, this will not be new news, but for
me it is. I purchased my "Huawei Y9 prime 2019" phone about six months
ago, with USB-C OTG (On The Go) capable port, and today is the first time that I have connected an external USB
Flash-stick to a phone.
USB Type-C (male) to USB 3.0 Type-A (female) adapters are available
locally for AU$11.50 from Altronics, and AU$14 from Harvey Norman. Be
careful, Jaycar have one for AU$12.95 but the specs state it is not OTG capable. I checked the online pages for Altronics and Harvey Norman, and neither specifically mentions OTG. So, beware.
However, I bought one specifically advertised for OTG usage, for only AU$4.99 via eBay:
It is AU stock and came very fast. So cheap, but does it work? I would like to report: yes!
I plugged it into my phone, with a Flash-stick attached, and
swiped-down to see the notifications. Android wanted to format the
drive, agreed, and it got formatted to vfat. Swiped-down again to see
notification with two buttons "View" and "Unmount". Chose the former,
and was able to see files on the Flash-stick. Chose "Unmount" before
unplugging the OTG adapter.
The main reason for this purchase, is organizing little details for
the next hike. The electrical kit will include the phone, and want to be
able to access files on the Flash-stick, maybe videos that I will have
put on it before the hike.
There is one other reason. I have an app on the phone named "Safe in
Cloud". Have used this for years, absolutely love it. Here is the
developer's site:
The database is encrypted and can be synced online, with Google
Drive, Dropbox, and others, however, being somewhat paranoid, I only
save it locally. With my previous phone, I used ADB via USB cable to
backup the database to my PC.
Now, with OTG, it is easy peasy to backup the database to the Flash-stick.
The electrical kit for hiking will have the phone, a small mains
charger, a very small solar panel, a couple of short USB cables, the OTG
adapter, Flash-stick and a tiny rechargeable torch.
Regarding, the solar panel. It is model SE05, that puts out almost 3.5W, that I wrote about in 2016:
https://bkhome.org/light/solar/panels-small-2016.htm
https://bkhome.org/news/202102/planning-equipment-for-next-ultralight-hiking-adventure.html
Ha ha, planning for a hike is as much fun as the actual hike!
EDIT 2021-02-04:
Just a quick note: A couple of people advised me via the "Contact me"
button at top of this page, that there are also double-pronged USB
Flash-sticks available, USB-C or micro-USB OTG at one end, USB-A at the
other. Yes, I already knew about those. What I wanted was the
flexibility of using any of my existing collection of Flash sticks.
Tags: light