Today’s phones have more storage than ever, and there are several ways to expand them. While most of them can opt for cloud storage or add an SD card to their mobile device, flash-card for your android phone may have its own benefits.
Why Use Android Flash Drive?
Having a phone flash drive can feel a bit awkward compared to having a lot of built-in storage or a cloud service, but think of it like an external drive for your PC or laptop. It is completely separate from your device, so if your mobile phone is damaged or lost, your data will still be securely stored. You also have full control over its location and distribution. It’s safe as long as you keep it safe, which gives you control over how secure the stored data is.
What’s more, thanks to the larger size of the connected flash drive, you can expand your mobile phone’s storage indefinitely by adding hundreds and hundreds of gigabytes if you use more than one device or decide to spend a lot on a large device.
How to Connect a USB Drive to Android
The only problem with using USB connected to your Android device is that smartphones usually do not have a compatible connector. Most flash drives have USB type A ports, which makes them great for connecting to legacy PCs and laptops, but useless (at least initially) for connecting them to your smartphone.
But it is not always the case. The easiest way to connect a USB drive to your Android smartphone is to buy one with a built-in USB connector and then connect it to your device.
- Check which port your phone has. Most modern devices have a unique USB port for charging and data transfer. Some recent devices have USB-C while older devices have microUSB.
- Once you know what you need, go to a normal retail website like Amazon and search for your USB standard followed by «Flash» like » microUSB flash «.
There are several factors you want to consider when choosing:
- Compatibility : Make sure your USB flash drive has a USB port on your smartphone. If your phone uses microUSB, you’ll want the USB stick to have the correct plug. If your device has a USB-C interface, you must make sure that it has a male version instead of a connector.
- Speed A: microUSB and USB-C are important for compatibility, but they don’t necessarily guarantee high speeds. You want USB 3.0 at least though USB 3.1 is still faster. Higher speed means less latency when transferring large files between your phone and flash drive.
- Versatility A: If you only want to connect a flash drive to your smartphone, then only one connector is needed. However there are some with microUSB/USB-C connectors and a USB type A connector on the other end, making it easy to connect your flash drive to your PC or laptop to transfer data between both devices.
- Storage size A: If you only want to back up a few images, videos, or documents, 32GB is probably more than enough for additional storage. However, if you want to store or transfer your entire phone’s data at once and intend to do so often, you can opt for a larger 128GB or even 256GB flash drive. Some options expand to terabytes, but they get very expensive.
Using the phone’s USB adapter
If the flash drive you want doesn’t have the right connector, you’re out of luck yet. There are adapters that you can use in as intermediaries between the two USB standards. They come in the form of cables and small adapters that are little more than USB plugs on each end.
