'Seeing' Android phone from Windows PC

[Brian-Gaff]

Blimey I thought I was out of date with xp. brian

[News]

In message , Robin writes

I do now :-) Thank you. It just works. I can now access phone from PC and PC from phone, both over home wi fi. Even son was impressed.

[News]

In message , Brian-Gaff writes

My bad, Brian. I am indeed using XP, not 98. Fingers in gear, brain in neutral again.

[Tim Watts]

I've never had a cable wear out :)

[Simon263]

Plenty of us have with wired mice particularly.

[Tim Watts]

The Type-C ?

Ah - that is nice. 100W of power potentially...

[Tim Watts]

But, if the power is bidirection what happens if you plug a battery pack into a laptop?

[Simon263]

Yep.

Yeah, seems to do all that is necessary but it remains to be seen how long that will be true for.

For quite a while IMO.

[Simon263]

[Tim Watts]

"Full-featured USB type-C cables are active, electronically marked cables that contain a chip with an ID function based on the configuration data channel and vendor-defined messages (VDMs) from the USB Power Delivery 2.0 specification. "

Hang on - is this the same stupid bollocks that stops me powering my Dell laptop from a generic PSU?

In which case, seems like a total own goal - you need to carry the device and its lead (not any lead) as well as the generic but beefy enough for everything PSU?

or is this always going to work:

"or they can support the full Power Delivery specification using both BMC-coded configuration line and legacy BFSK-coded VBUS line."

[Simon263]

No, nothing like that.

Nothing like that either.

No reason why not.

[Tim Watts]

So any idea what the "chip" is for?

[Simon263]

Basically so the system can work out what current is available and can indicate what currents it can use for charging.

Currently USB charging is done using a number of ways of signalling that stuff by DC levels on the data lines and that is done differently by Apple and by androids and by at least one other system. The chip gets rid of that proprietary stuff.

[Andy Burns]

Whenever I've found myself without a Dell charger, I've used HP chargers on my last two Dell Laptops, the laptop whinges because nothing "speaks" to it on the central ID pin, it won't charge the battery while running like that, but it does run ...

[Andy Burns]

The extra power is delivered by using higher voltages than 5V, so you don't want something accidentally zapping kit that's not expecting it.

[Tim Watts]

OK - that kinda makes sense, with the caveat that we are back into "special lead" territory...

I wonder why they could not start at 5V and negotiate up using the comms wire?

[Roger Mills]

[This thread was originally only in uk.d-i-y but I'm x-posting it to comp.mobile.android since that is probably more relevant.]

Following advice given here to enable ES File Explorer's Remote Manager function, I managed to use an FTP application running on my W7 computer to do two-way file transfers between the computer and my Android 5 Moto G phone - including accessing data stored on a micro-SD card inside the phone.

It's probably a pure coincidence but - the very next day after I got this working - I got an error message on the phone complaining that the SD card had been "removed unexpectedly" - which of course it hadn't!

According to Google, this is not an uncommon occurrence and is sometimes caused by some sort of incompatibility between phone and SD card. However, in my case, the card really seems to be screwed!

It's a 16GB Class-10 card, but only just over 1GB is actually used. This includes some photos and audio files - for which I have backups - but it also includes a number of Apps which have been been moved to the card and some off-line map files for the Here mapping/navigation App. I have turned the phone off several times and removed and re-seated the SD card

- after which it appears to work for a very short time, but then the error message reappears. Needless to say, if the phone can't access the card, the on-card Apps no longer work!

The card is now removed from the phone, and I have a new one on order. When I put the card into a micro-SD to SD adapter and plug that into the card reader slot of one of my PCs, the PC recognises the presence of the card, but goes unresponsive if I try to access any of the files. I've had slightly more success with another PC and have - I think - made a backup of everything on the card. But that took over 24 hours!!! to copy

1GB of data. What the hell was it doing all that time?

Having (I hope) got the data off, I've tried several times to re-format the card - but it just sits there like a lemon saying "0 percent completed".

I'm hoping that when the new card comes, I'll be able to restore all the files to it, put it into the phone and everything will work as before. Is this wishful thinking?

Does anyone have any insight as to what can happen to a micro-SD card such that it can only be read incredibly slowly, seemingly cannot be written to at all (and, no, it's not write protected) and makes a phone think that it's been removed when it hasn't?

Is there any possibility that using FTP between computer and phone could have damaged the card in some way? [I've had a smaller capacity card in the phone for a couple of days as a temporary measure, and that seems happy enough with the FTP process].

Informed comments please!

[Robin]

I am terribly sorry that I've led you into the mire. All I can say is that I've used/set up others to use the Remote Manager on tablets and phones without such problems.

Only thought is that I've read some phones with 4.4 (KitKat) don't like files being copied to SD cards 'cos of security around apps.

Apologies again. And do please let me know if I need to get out my insurance policy/flee the country.

[tlvp]

Two thoughts.

(i) If you've got safe copies of all files you've ever stored on that SD card, you might want to spend a few hours letting software test the card: use H2testw.exe (perhaps available at ) Virus-test first..

(ii) Again if you've got safe copies of everything on the card, you might try reformatting it with a known trustworthy SD-card formatter -- google

: sd formatter trendy

for advice on that. HTH. Cheers, -- tlvp

[Andy Burns]

Is it possible it's one of those counterfeit cards that only have e.g.

1GB of actual flash, but have been doctored to indicate having many times more than that? Problems generally show up once you copy more than the true capacity onto them ...