OTG on a HTC Desire 310?

[Grazuncle]

Hi all.
I would have posted this in the 310 forum but it is long been desertedand doubt anyone will see this

I only just got this phone (looks brand new) for use principally as a video player. The ida of plugging in an OTG and just using memory stick rather than opening up the case and messing with the microSD card

Plugging my OTG doesn't do anything. Anyone actually got one to work on the HTC model

Long shot I know but thanks for looking.

 

[svim]

https://www.gsmarena.com/htc_desire_310-6009.php

Some to take into consideration is you do need to get a phone that supports USB OTG, and even then there's the issue where not every OTG cable or OTG adapter will necessarily be compatible with that particular phone. With older, dated phones only some do include OTG and some don't, and with more recent models most do. But it 'could' be an issue where even if you get another phone that the OTB cable or adapter you have will work out for you. Don't be surprised if you need to just buy a different brand or model of OTG cable/adapter that is compatible.

A few years back the 'universal' aspect to the U in USB actually meant something, but since then things have devolved in to messy situation where proprietary standards have taken over. Now it's a matter where sometimes you can just plug a USB device and it works, but a lot of times there's a driver or firmware involved or you need to do a mix-and-match thing.

 

[Hadron]

I don't know this phone. I had a HTC One (m7), which was actually a year older, and OTG worked fine with that, but that was a flagship handset rather than a budget one with a low-end MediaTek processor, so that's no guarantee that this one supports it. Of course many online shops sell OTG adapters "for HTC Desire 310", but sadly that doesn't necessarily mean anything either.

Have you tried other devices in the OTG adapter, or just the one memory stick? If it supports OTG (and there isn't something wrong with the adapter) then a mouse or keyboard should work when attached (I've used both with old HTC phones), so if you only have the one memory stick you could use one of those to test instead.

 

[Grazuncle]

Thanks svim and Hadron

Very comprehensive replies and helps a lot.

Never occurred to me that another OTG might work or even trying other hardware.

Great information. Thanks!

 

[nickdalzell]

How old is it? Is this one of the earlier 2010 Desires that run Sense 3 like my Thunderbolt or one of the newer releases using the same name?

If it's the ancient one, there's 'USB Mass Storage' when you plug into a PC the phone should ask whether to enable USB Storage, or in HTCs 'disk drive' which allows easy copy/paste or drag/drop from a PC to a phone or vice versa. I never will understand why Google removed that. MTP is atrocious, and Wifi Direct never works, and Bluetooth might take weeks.

 

[mikedt]

How old is it? Is this one of the earlier 2010 Desires that run Sense 3 like my Thunderbolt or one of the newer releases using the same name?

If it's the ancient one, there's 'USB Mass Storage' when you plug into a PC the phone should ask whether to enable USB Storage, or in HTCs 'disk drive' which allows easy copy/paste or drag/drop from a PC to a phone or vice versa. I never will understand why Google removed that.

Google did it so Android devices could have unified secure internal storage, which is EXT4, the native file system for Linux kernel systems, such as Android. Old devices had partitioned internal storage, usually a smaller EXT4 partition for apps to install and run from, and a larger insecure FAT32 for general storage like photos. videos, MP3s, documents. It was only the FAT32 partition that appeared to your Windows PC as "HTC's disk drive" or whatever.

MTP is atrocious, and Wifi Direct never works, and Bluetooth might take weeks.

One can blame Micro$oft for that, as it was their invention. Basically because Windows on a PC can't directly mount and read anything that isn't a Microsoft Windows file system, such as Linux EXT4(used by Android) or Apple's APFS(used by Macs and iOS devices).

 

[Grazuncle]

How old is it? Is this one of the earlier 2010 Desires that run Sense 3 like my Thunderbolt or one of the newer releases using the same name?

it is a 2014 phone

thanks for replying

 

[Hadron]

Google did it so Android devices could have unified secure internal storage, which is EXT4, the native file system for Linux kernel systems, such as Android. Old devices had partitioned internal storage, usually a smaller EXT4 partition for apps to install and run from, and a larger insecure FAT32 for general storage like photos. videos, MP3s, documents. It was only the FAT32 partition that appeared to your Windows PC as "HTC's disk drive" or whatever.

Though if you used Linux (and had a rooted device) you could access the /data partition via USB with a modest amount of effort .

The other thing is that while the FAT32 partition was mounted as USB Mass Storage it was inaccessible to the phone. So for most people UMS was an advantage if they deleted something they didn't mean to but a drawback the rest of the time.

 

[nickdalzell]

USB Mass Storage never caused me any issues. I absolutely refuse to 'adapt' to MTP. That's why I rock so many old Androids. I prefer ease and convenience over whatever asinine thing Google wants us to do. The SD card in my phone is FAT32 but since USB Mass Storage is gone, can't even mount that on PC easily. Much less use it to play media via the aux USB input on my infotainment system in vehicles. They just don't see the music on modern phones.

Remember when android was all about choice? Since when is it ok to copy Apple and lock everything down to save some idiots? Where's the revolt that would have happened had they tried this in 2011? Even this forum wouldn't have been so tolerant of Google's decisions lately.

 

[Grazuncle]

USB Mass Storage never caused me any issues. I absolutely refuse to 'adapt' to MTP. That's why I rock so many old Androids. I prefer ease and convenience over whatever asinine thing Google wants us to do. The SD card in my phone is FAT32 but since USB Mass Storage is gone, can't even mount that on PC easily. Much less use it to play media via the aux USB input on my infotainment system in vehicles. They just don't see the music on modern phones.

Remember when android was all about choice? Since when is it ok to copy Apple and lock everything down to save some idiots? Where's the revolt that would have happened had they tried this in 2011? Even this forum wouldn't have been so tolerant of Google's decisions lately.

----------------------------

Thanks

I wonder if rooting my phone would make it more compliant.. I would need some direction on which one ..there are so many scare stories about spyware after rooting I don't know what to believe.

Of course if rooting doesn't help with the OTG I'll just stick to swapping the micro SD cards. not the end of the world is it. LOL

 

[Grazuncle]

update in anticipation of my rooting idea.

I discovered after entering developer mode and enabling USB debugging mode I can see my HTC on my pc with cabled to the USB port on the pc and I can transfer video files directly to the HTC. It now saves me powering off the phone, opening up the back cover, removing battery, taking out the Micro SD (does not easily slide out) and putting it into my card reader. A big time saver!

ps.. off the wall question. could you connect a phone usb to a tablet USB as my pc has just now? faster than Bluetooth?

 

[Hadron]

You won't be able to do the cable thing the same way, since your tablet won't have ADB installed to send the necessary commands (I'm assuming you used "adb push" and "adb pull" to transfer files).

Rooting in itself wouldn't have changed anything. All that root does is give you the ability to grant system (root) permissions to user-installed apps - it doesn't actually change anything itself, just gives you more options for changing things. The thing you have to remember is that making it possible to give root permissions to apps means you also make it possible for malware to gain those permissions, i.e. you need to be more careful what you do and what you install. As for spyware after rooting, just avoid all of those shady "one click root" tools. Have a look in the xda-developers forum for the Desire 310 to find out what recommended rooting options are, if that is something you wish to do, but ask yourself what you want to do with root before actually doing it: if the thing you want can be done without rooting, then don't bother.

Since you can do these file transfers without root, that's one fewer reason to consider it (though TBH I can't myself think how root would have helped with that).

 

[Hadron]

USB Mass Storage never caused me any issues. I absolutely refuse to 'adapt' to MTP. That's why I rock so many old Androids. I prefer ease and convenience over whatever asinine thing Google wants us to do. The SD card in my phone is FAT32 but since USB Mass Storage is gone, can't even mount that on PC easily. Much less use it to play media via the aux USB input on my infotainment system in vehicles. They just don't see the music on modern phones.

My car is old enough it doesn't have USB input in the first place, so that's not a problem for me .

I've not even had a microSD slot for most of a decade, but I have a couple of USB microSD readers, so would just use one of those for a computer. But I have no problem transferring files over USB to a phone, so can't say I found UMS easier or more convenient. To me the only differences are that I can still use the phone while doing so (if I want to, which I usually don't) and that I know there's no point trying to use file recovery software over MTP. It's also faster, but that's probably just down to newer USB hardware in both phone and computer.

Remember when android was all about choice? Since when is it ok to copy Apple and lock everything down to save some idiots? Where's the revolt that would have happened had they tried this in 2011? Even this forum wouldn't have been so tolerant of Google's decisions lately.

Actually there was no revolt here when they switched from UMS to MTP that I recall. And absolutely nobody wanted the old system of fixed "data" and "sdcard" partitions in their internal storage: although some of us complained (and still do) about Google hanging onto misleading legacy names like "sdcard" for virtual volumes, which would confuse people who didn't understand how the filesystem actually works, I remember everybody finding being able to fill the internal storage with whatever mix of apps, data or media you wanted, rather than running out of one kind of space while having the other partition half empty, a great improvement. And as Mike said above, that change was not compatible with keeping UMS and letting Windows users transfer files via USB at all (since Windows didn't understand linux filesystems), so for most people any minor inconvenience from MTP was a price worth paying.

I have plenty of problems with Google (I trust them slightly more than Facebook, but that's about it), but the switch of filesystems, which is what lay behind the abandoning of UMS, is not one of them.

Of course it would have been possible to keep UMS as an option for microSD cards, but by that point Google had long ago lost interest in those anyway (the last Google device with a microSD slot was the Nexus One in 2010), so it's no surprise that they didn't include separate provision using a different access method for those.

 

[Grazuncle]

This is great information! Thanks

Might have been a good idea to say why I bought an old tech phone in the first place.. this is for a technically challenged older person that just needs a basic phone for calls (no internet/data) and would like to see some video on a device. No DVD player and doesn't want to watch TV in bed.. this is an unusual situation I admit but he liked the phone display idea????

I have two workable options now.. I'm timing a Bluetooth transfer to the HTC from my Redmi Note 10 Pro (470Mb)

and could do a potential faster transfer if I took my laptop with me....

update.. this 470Mb fil has done 37% in 15 minutes.. a lot slower than I thought... so it is the laptop tethering then .. LOL

Thanks for taking an interest in this thread Hadron

 

[mikedt]

USB Mass Storage never caused me any issues. I absolutely refuse to 'adapt' to MTP. That's why I rock so many old Androids. I prefer ease and convenience over whatever asinine thing Google wants us to do. The SD card in my phone is FAT32 but since USB Mass Storage is gone, can't even mount that on PC easily. Much less use it to play media via the aux USB input on my infotainment system in vehicles. They just don't see the music on modern phones.

Neither do I, and quite frankly I don't think I've ever tried to use Microsoft's MTP, but then I've not used Windows on my own computers since 2008. From what I understand, MTP is basically a Microsoft kludge, mainly because Windows can't mount and use removable storage devices that aren't Windows formatted, e.g. Linux EXT4.

I don't currently drive a car myself, but when I've seen drivers playing music from their phones in taxis etc. it seems to be either using Bluetooth, or FM transmitter type devices. No wires, except for powering and charging the phone.

Remember when android was all about choice? Since when is it ok to copy Apple and lock everything down to save some idiots? Where's the revolt that would have happened had they tried this in 2011? Even this forum wouldn't have been so tolerant of Google's decisions lately.

I do remember many posts from users on various fora, including AF, howling about storage partitioning in devices, usually about how they didn't have enough space for their apps and games. Something that Google and having unified EXT4 storage aimed to solve, where users have a choice if they want to use the total internal storage for their apps, and not what some manufacturer has decided they should have.

 

[nickdalzell]

I was referring to the forum revolt that would have happened had they tried copying Apple (see: Pixel, limiting choice, etc) back in 2011 when AOSP And Holo UI was all the rage. The mere idea of losing many features that were considered staples of Android then would have been blasphemy. I was not referring to losing UMS but I sure would have revolted. I didn't need no stinking drivers to mount UMS but I couldn't locate the software necessary to mount MTP and my cars never worked via USB anymore. To me it was a huge inconvenience. I'm a stick in the mud, and when I get used to doing things a specific way, forcing me to re-learn and re-adapt to a new way out of the blue for no reason just makes me want to stop giving you my business. I do not take kindly to frustration and unnecessary change.

I can't imagine living without the SD card. The mere convenience of having all your data instantly available (like my 3K songs) when switching devices is too good to lose. It could take hours to re-download all the data on my SD card from any 'cloud'. This includes backed up APKs since 2009, MP3 files, all the photos I've taken, podcasts, videos, etc. Heck, I got 20GBs used right now of old YouTube content archived that's long-purged from their site today.

Also, if my phone were busted, that data would be lost forever. With an SD card, I can still retrieve it. Even if the card goes read-only I can still access it.

I'm still miffed we lost IR blasters, removable batteries, and notification LEDs. Given I'm an A-Series Samsung user today, I'm sure the headphone jack is next ultimately, but I'm not planning on buying another new phone unless they get rid of LTE and VoLTE for say, 8G in like 2050 or something.