No USB? - Nexus 4 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting

Hey,
So I ordered the Nexus 4 about a week ago but I just read that there is no USB support. However do you transfer files from your phone to your computer and how do you get new roms onto your phone? I typically download on my computer because its so much faster in terms of internet connection and then I plug my usb in and just drag the roms or files or whatever onto my phone.

ImHavenHart said:
Hey,
So I ordered the Nexus 4 about a week ago but I just read that there is no USB support. However do you transfer files from your phone to your computer and how do you get new roms onto your phone? I typically download on my computer because its so much faster in terms of internet connection and then I plug my usb in and just drag the roms or files or whatever onto my phone.
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Where on earth did you read that???
There is just no USB-OTG (on the go) support, AKA support for USB keyboards/mice/thumbdrives

ImHavenHart said:
Hey,
So I ordered the Nexus 4 about a week ago but I just read that there is no USB support. However do you transfer files from your phone to your computer and how do you get new roms onto your phone? I typically download on my computer because its so much faster in terms of internet connection and then I plug my usb in and just drag the roms or files or whatever onto my phone.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
There is USB support, just not as the host.

Thanks! Some people obviously have their information wrong. Yeah I had read about no on the go support but I read that there was no USB port either, someone was blogging and about and ranting about how annoying it was going to be to have to access files wirelessly on his computer instead of being able to plug it in. It's good to know he had his info wrong! lol

ImHavenHart said:
Thanks! Some people obviously have their information wrong. Yeah I had read about no on the go support but I read that there was no USB port either, someone was blogging and about and ranting about how annoying it was going to be to have to access files wirelessly on his computer instead of being able to plug it in. It's good to know he had his info wrong! lol
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even without using usb you can always transfer the files over the LAN from your PC using ES file explorer or some such. :good:

honestly transferring files over WiFi isnt anymore inconvenient then always having to carry around your micro usb cable, run airdroid on the phone navigate on your pc browser, drag and drop files...

djkinetic said:
honestly transferring files over WiFi isnt anymore inconvenient then always having to carry around your micro usb cable, run airdroid on the phone navigate on your pc browser, drag and drop files...
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it is less inconvenient than the other 2 options imo.
Or is that what you meant?

i think what you are concerned about is the usb mode in which the phone acts when plugged in via usb. it defaults to mtp mode rather than the old USB Mass Storage.

I had the same question as the OP. Did a little research, and with Windows you just plug your device in; on MacOS you need to install an app on your computer. It's not quite as convenient as having it appear as a connected device in MacOS Finder -- can't preview the images in place, for example -- but it's OK.
(I can't post outside links yet as a new user; google "stackexchange nexus 4 usb storage connect", it's the first result)

Related

accessing android phone (USB Mass Storage)

am i being stupid ??
im sat here with my HTC Desire (running GingerVillain) connected via USB to my transformer dock. Ive enabled USB mass storage on my phone.
Can i find it using File Manager ? No ... nor ES file explorer ..... am i going mad ? im sure when i was at home i was able to find a USB drive through file explorer ... is this a quirk of Android mass storage or am i just being thick ??
It doesn't work for me either. Would be nice if they got this to work soon. I thought maybe it was because I din't have 3.1 but even after the update it won't work. Kinda sucks.
this is similar as connect together two windows pc, It never worked like that . why should work here then?
qq67 said:
this is similar as connect together two windows pc, It never worked like that . why should work here then?
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hmmmm. but isnt the whole point of the Android USB Mass storage 'mode' that it works like a USB Flash drive ? ... and the Transformer copes with USB Flash Drives !!!
im not suggesting that its like plugging two windows pcs together ????
i had a thread about this last week.
it does the same thing for me (i have an HTC desire). very annoying!!!!
the only way i found to easily transfer files was using a bluetooth transfer app called:
"Bluetooth file transfer" free in the android market.
its not that fast (bluetooth limitation) but allows transfer of smaller files etc.
i wanted to transfer all my music (like 4gb) but over BT that would take days lol
so i have to wait to copy paste it all to a computer, copy paste to a USB stick, copy paste onto the transformer
OR, upload on my wifi to Dropbox and then download onto my transformer. uploading 4gb would also take days....
hopefully it will come soon...!!!
connected my san francisco (CM7) to the TF, it's mounted as 'removable' correctly...
I have my external HITACHI HDD on NTFS working fine but when I've tried to connect my Nexus S in as a drive its just blink on Transformer task bar and thats all
I would love to see my NS connected to Transformer so I can do more work on it.
Any1 know how to make it work ?
I have the same problem. I am on 3.1, but my X10 mini is not seen by the Transformer. No problems with thumb drives - or even a Microsoft wireless mouse (with own dongle) works perfectly.
It's a little surprising that an Android device is the only thing that is giving me problems!

[Q] USB Transfer from phone to tablet

Have a TPT with wireless only. I want to transfer documents from my phone, HTC Incredible, to the tablet. When I use USB File Transfer or any file manager, it shows USB connection, but no documents. How do I fix this?
Lissajane1 said:
Have a TPT with wireless only. I want to transfer documents from my phone, HTC Incredible, to the tablet. When I use USB File Transfer or any file manager, it shows USB connection, but no documents. How do I fix this?
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You have a ThinkPad Tablet and an HTC Incredible and they are only connected by a USB cable? A cable with a "type A" plug (large rectangular plug; fits the USB ports on an ordinary PC or notebook) at one end and a micro USB "type B" (the way that you charge your phone) at the other? And you have the type A end plugged into the large USB jack on the TpT and the other end plugged into the phone?
Assuming that the above is correct, I doubt that you can get there from here, because your TpT doesn't have the drivers to know how to control hte storage in your phone, even if you remembered to put your phone into USB storage mode before you tried.
The easiest way that I can think of to transfer between the two devices (without passing an SD card back and forth or using a PC) is get Wifi-Explorer from the Google Play store. You'll need to buy the Pro version, probably.
Lissajane1 said:
Have a TPT with wireless only. I want to transfer documents from my phone, HTC Incredible, to the tablet. When I use USB File Transfer or any file manager, it shows USB connection, but no documents. How do I fix this?
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Click to collapse
I might suggest considering Bluetooth File Transfer for smaller files.
If it's your own incredible and own tpt, then I suggest to install multimount sdcard app to incredible, which mounts sd at any time even in not connected state, so mount your sd and plug in to tpt, should work. Also if you have clockworkmod recovery installed, it also mount sd at any time, but not so comfortable if speed of recovery boot is awful.

Connecting to MAC via USB ???

Well it's official, I'm at my wits end trying to figure out just how to connect my Note 10.1 to my Macbook Air connecting via USB cable. Every time I connect the two, I can't find it ANYWHERE on my laptop !!!
Anyone else experience this all too frustrating conundrum???
Sent from my GT-N8013 using xda premium
I've had this issue since I bought it months ago. Use AirDroid.
dmarco said:
Well it's official, I'm at my wits end trying to figure out just how to connect my Note 10.1 to my Macbook Air connecting via USB cable. Every time I connect the two, I can't find it ANYWHERE on my laptop !!!
Anyone else experience this all too frustrating conundrum???
Sent from my GT-N8013 using xda premium
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Click to collapse
Android file transfert works fine. Do NOT install the Samsung USB driver from kies this Is complete ****. airdroid is **** too you can't even copy a folder. ah don't forget to disable USB debbug otherwise aft won't detect your device.
I've never been able to see any of my Android devices on my Mac without using Android File Transfer & I believev that's the way things just are.
The problem is that Android only presents itself over USB as either a media device using MTP (Media Transfer Protocol) or PTP (PrinterTransfer Protocol) standards - settable in settings. It does not support USB Mass Storage protocol.
Windows supports MTP out of the box for Media Player, so when you connect your Android to it - it shows up as what looks like, for all intents and purposes, a hard drive. In the Note's case - you get two: one for the internal simulated 'SD' card - and one for the actual SD card reader. This is why when you copy files to and from the Note, the experience is a little weird - it will offer to convert files for you, for example.
Unfortunately, MacOS X doesn't support MTP because, I suspect, Apple wants everyone using iDevices and their proprietary iTunes protocols which aren't compabtible with MTP.
Now, while it's dumb of Google not to support USB Mass Storage in Android, it's equally dumb of Apple not to support MTP in their OS.
Fortunately, there are addons you can get to fix this (as noted above).
Windows users (and I suspect, Linux ones as well) don't have a problem.
TheWerewolf said:
The problem is that Android only presents itself over USB as either a media device using MTP (Media Transfer Protocol) or PTP (PrinterTransfer Protocol) standards - settable in settings. It does not support USB Mass Storage protocol.
Windows supports MTP out of the box for Media Player, so when you connect your Android to it - it shows up as what looks like, for all intents and purposes, a hard drive. In the Note's case - you get two: one for the internal simulated 'SD' card - and one for the actual SD card reader. This is why when you copy files to and from the Note, the experience is a little weird - it will offer to convert files for you, for example.
Unfortunately, MacOS X doesn't support MTP because, I suspect, Apple wants everyone using iDevices and their proprietary iTunes protocols which aren't compabtible with MTP.
Now, while it's dumb of Google not to support USB Mass Storage in Android, it's equally dumb of Apple not to support MTP in their OS.
Fortunately, there are addons you can get to fix this (as noted above).
Windows users (and I suspect, Linux ones as well) don't have a problem.
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It's not across the board android, just the tablets. All my phones up to the note 2 would connect as mass storage even with exchange installed. Even the og note
I've just found an app called ES file explorer. Set up your Mac as a smb server and you can access your files via wifi. Much faster than blue tooth.
A video file transfer from my macbook to my note 10.1 took 4 hours, similar file via wifi took about 5 mins.
Still testing the app, but quite pleased so far.
esincho said:
It's not across the board android, just the tablets. All my phones up to the note 2 would connect as mass storage even with exchange installed. Even the og note
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Kinda. I don't think my Galaxy Nexus phone shows up in MacOS either (it's been a while since I checked so I could be wrong).
To complicate matters, each vendor adds bits to the OS. For example, Asus Transformer Primes can read NTFS drives out of the box - but most Androids can't. They've added something to the kernel to add the capability.
AFAIK, the base Android doesn't support USB Mass Storage on the host port.
Did u try to mount the drives in recovery? I'm assuming your rooted
esincho said:
Did u try to mount the drives in recovery? I'm assuming your rooted
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I'm NOT rooted, I'm actually running stock JB version on T-mo.
Sent from my SGH-T999 using xda premium

[Q] Play movies from nexus 4 on PC

Hi
Can I play movies on PC from nexus 4 while it's connected with USB cable like it was a regular flash drive?
When I try doing it the file is being downloaded first then plays. If the file is big it takes a lot of time.
I'm using windows 8.
Better copy the film to your pc first. I got the same problem but dont think this is os related. Just a bad read speed, worse than actually usb 2.0.
The speed is onpair with usb 2.0, still copying the whole movie to some unknown place instead of direct play is unnecessary and waste of time.
My previous phone had an sdcard which appeared as hard drive when connected to PC, but N4 appears as portable device. This sucks
That's because the Nexus 4 doesn't support USB On The Go. Search xda for "Nexus 4 OTG" and you'll come across some threads about this, and a couple of workarounds that might, or might not work for you :fingers-crossed:.
Hey there
I wasn't looking for USB OTG, which is a way to connect external drives to the device. I'm looking for a way to use N4 itself as a regular external drive while connected to PC. Currently it's seen by PC as a portable device and it's pretty limited.
abbba said:
Hey there
I wasn't looking for USB OTG, which is a way to connect external drives to the device. I'm looking for a way to use N4 itself as a regular external drive while connected to PC. Currently it's seen by PC as a portable device and it's pretty limited.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I would assume increasing the SD read-ahead (if you're on a custom kernel) might help with your issue here. But as someone else previously mentioned, copying to PC is definitely the better option. That, or just enjoy the movie on your Nexus4

[Q] Video Music Files Auto Sync with PC USB 3.0

Hello, I would like to ask if someone knows a way how to sync video, music files, photos, documents automatically with files in the PC. I would like to take advantage of the speed of the USB 3.0 of the the Note 3. Its like when you connect the phone to PC it will compare two folders (in PC and in the phone) automatically and copy/paste the files.
I used to use cheetah sync, but it uses wifi, which is very slow and most of the time stops/fails after a while of transferring.
Thanks!
karlo6184 said:
Hello, I would like to ask if someone knows a way how to sync video, music files, photos, documents automatically with files in the PC. I would like to take advantage of the speed of the USB 3.0 of the the Note 3. Its like when you connect the phone to PC it will compare two folders (in PC and in the phone) automatically and copy/paste the files.
I used to use cheetah sync, but it uses wifi, which is very slow and most of the time stops/fails after a while of transferring.
Thanks!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I do not know any sync program but I just wanted to point out that the USB 3.0 doesn't make it any faster in this case because of the internal read/write speed is lower that USB 2.0 maxlimit.
AFAIK they added USB 3.0 to allow fast charging through a computer with USB 3.0 port.
Are you able to have access to the phone through USB 3 port ?
Mine doesn't show on the PC Explorer... but it is charging pretty fast through this port.
I don't know if actually it is an issue on my phone or my PC (drivers?) as I don't have any other USB 3 devices...
GalaxHe said:
Are you able to have access to the phone through USB 3 port ?
Mine doesn't show on the PC Explorer... but it is charging pretty fast through this port.
I don't know if actually it is an issue on my phone or my PC (drivers?) as I don't have any other USB 3 devices...
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Click to collapse
There is a special mode on the phone called "allow file transfer through usb 3.0" or something that you need to click to access the phones filesystem through your computer.

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