Blog Post
Expand your Android Phone’s Memory with a USB OTG
Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock somewhere, you may have already heard or seen a friend use a USB OTG on their phone or Android device. One of Android’s chief feature is its capacity for expandable memory. Aside from a microSD slot that provides for an already large amount of potential space, the USB OTG can even expand it a bit more.
(photocredit:Hotallo)
What is a USB OTG?
USB stand for Universal Serial Bus and OTG means On the Go. Unlike a regular USB device which has only a flash drive port on one side, a USB OTG device has a male micro USB to female USB connector on one side. This side has a port like that of a smart phone charger. The other side has a male flash drive port you can use to insert on another device’s female flash drive port. This device makes a Smartphone a USB host enabling it to read, save and transfer files to and from the device. This means you can access, files, listen to songs and even watch movies on your phone with files saved on your USB OTG.
Does your Phone have OTG Capacity?
The fastest way to tell if your phone has OTG capacity is to install a USB OTG checker app. You can download one at the Google Playstore. A longer and more complicated route is rooting your phone. You can check out YouTube for tutorials on how to root your device. Proceed with caution. Unless hacker is your middle name, I’m guessing you wouldn’t want to meddle with your phone’s software. Or better yet, you can just plug in a USB OTG storage device and see if your phone can access the media stored on it.
Do you know of another way to determine if an android phone is OTG ready? Tell us in the comments section.