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GNex Lacks USB Mass Storage??!!

smokiedabong said:
Nope it's true


"ICS supports USB Mass Storage (UMS). The Galaxy Nexus does not. This is the same scenario as Honeycomb, as for instance HC supports USB Mass Storage while Xoom does not.

If a given device has a removable SD card it will support USB Mass Storage. If it has only built-in storage (like Xoom and Galaxy Nexus) it will (usually) support only MTP and PTP.

It isn't physically possible to support UMS on devices that don't have a dedicated partition for storage (like a removable SD card, or a separate partition like Nexus S.) This is because UMS is a block-level protocol that gives the host PC direct access to the physical blocks on the storage, so that Android cannot have it mounted at the same time.

With the unified storage model we introduced in Honeycomb, we share your full 32GB (or 16GB or whatever) between app data and media data. That is, no more staring sadly at your 5GB free on Nexus S when your internal app data partition has filled up -- it's all one big happy volume.

However the cost is that Android can no longer ever yield up the storage for the host PC to molest directly over USB. Instead we use MTP. On Windows (which the majority of users use), it has built-in MTP support in Explorer that makes it look exactly like a disk. On Linux and Mac it's sadly not as easy, but I have confidence that we'll see some work to make this better.

On the whole it's a much better experience on the phone."
Click to expand...


:blink:
 
I have a Transformer and it does the exact same thing. I've never had a problem transferring files so there's really nothing for you guys to worry about. I've never had a problem with MTP.
 
Think about it this way , instead of having one drive for the OS ( internal memory ) and one drive ( SD Card ) for media , it's going to have only one drive with the OS and a media folder on the same drive and partition instead of the SD Card , you will be able to access this via MTP .
This is not a bad thing at all , before if the device was mounted on a PC you weren't able to access the SD Card , apps installed on the SD Card , music , pics etc. , now you are able to access those files simultaneously with the PC and phone while copying data to the SD card . No need to mount the drive from the drop down menu , just connect and voila . No need to safe unmount .
And if you think it's a downgrade from the previous phones cause you won't be able to see the whole partition , thus the OS folders it's not at all . You weren't able to see the OS folders with the previous phones either cause they were on a different drive that was not mounting to the PC using UMS . All you could see was the SD card which was a media drive now replaced by a media folder .
You are still able to use Root Explorer to see the system folders from your phone if you need to . You can still use ABD to change system files on your phone from Windows .
 
Last edited:
smokiedabong said:
Think about it this way , instead of having one drive for the OS ( internal memory ) and one drive ( SD Card ) for media , it's going to have only one drive with the OS and a media folder on the same drive and partition instead of the SD Card , you will be able to access this via MTP .
This is not a bad thing at all , before if the device was mounted on a PC you weren't able to access the SD Card , apps installed on the SD Card , music , pics etc. , now you are able to access those files simultaneously with the PC and phone while copying data to the SD card . No need to mount the drive from the drop down menu , just connect and voila . No need to safe unmount .
And if you think it's a downgrade from the previous phones cause you won't be able to see the whole partition , thus the OS folders it's not at all . You weren't able to see the OS folders with the previous phones either cause they were on a different drive that was not mounting to the PC using UMS . All you could see was the SD card which was a media drive now replaced by a media folder .
You are still able to use Root Explorer to see the system folders from your phone if you need to . You can still use ABD to change system files on your phone from Windows .
Click to expand...

You'd think the idiots at Engadget would have known this.
 
smokiedabong said:
Think about it this way , instead of having one drive for the OS ( internal memory ) and one drive ( SD Card ) for media , it's going to have only one drive with the OS and a media folder on the same drive and partition instead of the SD Card , you will be able to access this via MTP .
This is not a bad thing at all , before if the device was mounted on a PC you weren't able to access the SD Card , apps installed on the SD Card , music , pics etc. , now you are able to access those files simultaneously with the PC and phone while copying data to the SD card . No need to mount the drive from the drop down menu , just connect and voila . No need to safe unmount .
And if you think it's a downgrade from the previous phones cause you won't be able to see the whole partition , thus the OS folders it's not at all . You weren't able to see the OS folders with the previous phones either cause they were on a different drive that was not mounting to the PC using UMS . All you could see was the SD card which was a media drive now replaced by a media folder .
You are still able to use Root Explorer to see the system folders from your phone if you need to . You can still use ABD to change system files on your phone from Windows .
Click to expand...

Exactly, I don't think you could have explained this any better.
 
Wow excellent explanation! I am not the smartest one but after reading it three times I finally got it.. :) Just to sum it up we have a folder now that works the same as the SD card did in the past :biggrin:
 
Engadget is not all-knowing.

Their quote:

"Using the camera exposed a major flaw in Ice Cream Sandwich, namely the lack of USB mass storage support (only media / picture transfer protocols are available). We can only hope this standard functionality will be restored in the very near future."

They make it sound like USB file transfers are not possible, as if we won't be able to shuffle files, pics, whatever back and forth, which in incorrect.
 
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