What do you do when your mobile phone has limited storage and there’s no
option to add an external SD card? How do you carry all your videos and
documents where there’s not an iota of space left on the device? Yes,
you do have cloud-based services like Dropbox or Google Drive that add
virtually unlimited storage to your phone but you’ve to be connected to
the Internet to access your files.
This week I’ve been testing a wireless USB stick from Sandisk that
adds storage to your phones and tablets much like a regular USB drive.
To get started, you plug the USB device into your laptop or desktop
computer and let it charge for about an hour or two. You can also
transfer the files to the stick from the computer through Windows
Explorer or Finder on Mac.
Once the device is charged, you tap
the little power button on the stick to turn it on. Now install the
Sandisk Connect app on your mobile phone, go to WiFi settings on your
phone and connect to the Wi-Fi hotspot created by the USB stick. That’s
it.
The content of the USB drive can now be accessed from your mobile
phone. You can stream audio and video files stored on the stick, you can
browse photos, open PDF files and other documents in associated mobile
apps and you can easily transfer files between the phone and the
wireless drive. It is much like plugging a USB stick into your mobile
phone but without the wires.
The Wi-Fi network has no security by default but you do have an option to add a password to prevent other nearby devices from connecting to the USB stick.
Unlike
using cloud storage, Sandisk’s Connect USB stick requires no Internet
connection (it will create a hotspot that your mobile device will
connect to) and multiple devices can connect to the same USB drive over
Wi-Fi. So if you are carrying an iPad and an Android phone, not only can
the two devices connect to the stick simultaneously but it can be used
as a temporary medium to transfer files between the iOS and Android device.
The
USB stick itself is solidly built with a transparent protective casing
though it is obviously heavier and looks bigger than regular USB sticks.
The Sandisk mobile app does have some issues but none of them are a
deal breaker. In my testing, the iPad app frequently crashed especially
when reading big PDF files. The Android app would not allow me to browse
the web using cellular connection while the phone was connected to USB
drive over Wifi.
Sandisk Connect (Amazon, Flipkart)
is compatible with both Android and iOS devices and is available in
various capacities from 16GB to 128GB. If you are running out of storage
space on your mobile phone and upgrading is not an option, the Connect
stick is probably the easiest way to expand your phone’s existing
storage.
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