GNex Lacks USB Mass Storage??!!

[MightyT01]

Engadget's preview says GNex lacks USB mass storage what does this mean in practical terms?

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[screaminz2002]

Good question. Here is the paragraph:
We took a few pictures over the course of our first day with the Galaxy Nexus and the verdict is still out regarding the choice of a five megapixel camera vs. the excellent eight megapixel shooter that's standard fare on most of Samsung's flagship handsets. Our existing shots look decent, but the results sometimes required some tweaks to the exposure value, especially in low light. 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.

Source Galaxy Nexus HSPA+ first impressions (video) -- Engadget

[MightyT01]

Good question. Here is the paragraph:
We took a few pictures over the course of our first day with the Galaxy Nexus and the verdict is still out regarding the choice of a five megapixel camera vs. the excellent eight megapixel shooter that's standard fare on most of Samsung's flagship handsets. Our existing shots look decent, but the results sometimes required some tweaks to the exposure value, especially in low light. 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.

Source Galaxy Nexus HSPA+ first impressions (video) -- Engadget

Thanks for putting up the link. Obviously having USB mass storage allows you to view all your SD card contents when you mount it to your PC. This allows me to do whatever I want to the files located there good or bad.

I'm wondering if this is an attempt to make Android 4.0 more security conscious and enable better enterprise security functionality for it's use in the government or business sector? I know in my work we have listed the newer Droid series of phones over the past year as authorized corporate phones because of the Moto tools for encrypting portions of the SD card for corporate push email and such.

I don't want to jump the gun too soon, but as a private consumer this blows. I want unfettered access to my phone and it's contents. Let me decide what security or lack of security I want on it. If this holds true for the consumer version of the GNex, I hope the dev community comes with a hack or app to allow USB mass storage support.

[StupidGenius]

Good question. Here is the paragraph:
We took a few pictures over the course of our first day with the Galaxy Nexus and the verdict is still out regarding the choice of a five megapixel camera vs. the excellent eight megapixel shooter that's standard fare on most of Samsung's flagship handsets. Our existing shots look decent, but the results sometimes required some tweaks to the exposure value, especially in low light. 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.

Source Galaxy Nexus HSPA+ first impressions (video) -- Engadget

I saw that as well. Almost reads as if pictures that are taken can't be saved to the phone but have to be uploaded somewhere. I would find that hard to believe, or I'm totally misunderstanding.

Also, with all the reviews I've read, no others make mention of this.

[MightyT01]

I saw that as well. Almost reads as if pictures that are taken can't be saved to the phone but have to be uploaded somewhere. I would find that hard to believe, or I'm totally misunderstanding.

Also, with all the reviews I've read, no others make mention of this.

Good point. I hope to hell that Engadget got a developer's phone to review that did not have USB mass storage on it.

[smokiedabong]

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."

[mikeinctown]

I read all that and still don't know what it means.

About the only thing I can see is that the phone will need to be on and hooked up to the computer via USB and you have to go through the picture transfer software for the photos to move. VS just pulling your SD card and being able to pull the files direct.

Does that sum it up? or did I just get that all wrong?

[screaminz2002]

I am not exactly sure I understood everything. With media transfer protocol we will only be able to move and manipulate certain formats of data? How does this effect rooting?

[ice456789]

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."

Are you telling me that this sucker is nuclear?

[sbenson]

Guys, chill, the reports are incorrect. USB file transfers will be available once debugging is enabled.

Source: Galaxy Nexus: Enable USB Debugging | Technipages