The world of OTG
USB
On-The-Go allows the phone to operate in host mode, rather than as a peripheral.
At the simplest
level this allows you to plug USB flash memory modules into the phone, which
then sees them as storage, as long as they’re in the FAT32 format.
The simplest level allows
you to plug USB flash memory modules into the phone
You can also plug
low-power devices in like this classic Microsoft Mouse, and keyboards too, but
to use both you’ll need a USB hub.
You can also plug
low-power devices in.
On the Samsung
Galaxy S2, plugging in a mouse causes a pointer to appear on the screen, which
you can then control just like a PC. A Bluetooth mouse will also make this
happen.
Plugging in a mouse causes
a pointer to appear on the screen.
The OTG cable: You
can make one yourself, but they’re so cheap that it’s hardly worth the time and
effort, if your phone supports this mode.
The OTG cable
Big screen entertainment
It’s all well and
good getting the mouse and keyboard to work with the phone, but I can’t see
many typists would want to do much keying with a 3.7” or 4” monitor.
What you need
ideally is a phone that can connect to a monitor or TV, but are such things
available? Amazingly, lots of the latest smartphones will do this trick with
the right cables, although most of them don’t actually come with them. I picked
up the official AC M490 MHL adaptor for my HTC Sensation XE for around $30,
although I’ve since seen generic MHL cables for half this price.
AC M490 MHL adaptor
Mobile
High-Definition Link (MHL) is a new standard that the mobile industry is trying
to adopt for getting displays out of phone and tablets. The beauty of this
technology is that it’s not tied to any particular connector, although most of
the implementations we’ve seen so far use the micro-USB port that all European
phones with the exception of Apple’s use. Apple evaded that particular
directive by releasing a conversion adapter for its proprietary port,
intentionally missing the point of the phrase ‘European Standard’.
Mobile High-Definition
Link
A quick search of
your phone model and ‘MHL’ should determine if yours supports this technology
and if it’s worth investing in the cable. It’s a reasonably safe bet that new
high-end phones entering the market are likely to include this feature, in
particular tablets, as it allows them to play video on TVs without having any
other media playback devices or a smart TV.
To use the MHL
adapter is simplicity itself. One end goes into the USB port, and at the other
end is a through cable for USB, so that the phone is powered, and an HDMI port,
which you connect to the TV/monitor. There’s no software switch you need to
throw on the phone; it just works. And, magically, whatever is on the screen
appears on the big display.
As marvellous as
this is, I immediately spotted some issues that are mostly seen with
Gingerbread and, in my case, with HTC Sense not really bring ready for this
sort of activity. The HTC Sense interface doesn’t use landscape mode, so the
first screen you’ll probably see looks odd, and disappointing. However, once
inside an app or part of the interface that’s landscape capable, things look
much better.
However, it’s
worth pointing out that while MHL mode did exploit the full screen of my
monitor, using 720p resolution, what it didn’t do was actually create a
high-resolution interface. Instead what it did was produce a scaled up version
of the interface as seen on the phone.
This is
understandable, I guess, but I don’t think it would take much effort to have a
second resolution mode that it uses once MHL is active. Perhaps we’ll see this
in a revision to Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS) or even in Jellybean, aka Android
5.0.
What it’s
brilliant for is anyone who needs to demonstrate a phone feature or software to
more than one other person, because you can attach it, as I did, to as big a TV
as you have access to. This can make gaming on the phone a whole lot more fun
too, as you don’t have your fat fingers obscuring the action.
