MHL and USB-OTG on the Nexus 7 - Mounting USB Storage Not Supported

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• Jedi2155 - Saturday, June 30, 2012 - link

  Changing complexity from 1 port to does not add much complexity in their but the simple matter that I've noticed is that they simply don't care. Most people don't bother to look up anything, and just ignore it. Yet they want everything to work when they want it and want it fast.
  
  I'll agree that USB host is an awesome feature, and IF it became widely known to the masses, I'd say a sizeable portion of them would want it, but the difficulty to even explain what it is to masses is hard enough, that it will remain a niche feature.

• Jedi2155 - Saturday, June 30, 2012 - link

  On the bright side, its usually the geeks with money, and voice to the manufacturer, so we got leverage through that side :). To argue that the masses, want it though, that's just a can of worms as we have already witnessed.

• veeman - Thursday, August 30, 2012 - link

  The reason why they didn't include an SD slot is because if they did include it, less people would be using Google's cloud services and Google wants as many people to use it as possible.

• g00ey - Tuesday, September 18, 2012 - link

  But that is a GREAT misconception. The number one major determinant of whether or not people will use cloud services is the bandwidth, or accessibility. If the cloud services are seamless and convenient to use, people will use them REGARDLESS of internal storage in their phones, PERIOD!
  
  The fact is that the more internal storage people have in their phones, the more need for backup services they will have. So it is pretty much the other way around.

• hrrmph - Saturday, June 30, 2012 - link

  So your justification for denying worldwide users the ability to carry their own storage and data is that your personal travel habits keep you in the US?
  
  You know - the United States... 20% of the world economy... 1.9% of the surface of the earth... 6.6% of the land mass... 4.5% of the population. Pick a number - they all mean the same thing: we're citizens of a country that represents a minority slice of the world and the world market.
  
  As much as the Nexus is a halo product, clearly targeted at wealthy countries, all of the manufacturers would do well to not ignore opportunities to both serve the world market in its entirety (ie: profit from it) and help out US travelers.
  
  I wonder how the Nexus is going to work down-under in the Outback, say about an hour outside of Alice Springs, where you'd be lucky to get a phone signal much less WiFi. How about off the coast of Japan or Korea? Or the North Sea? Alaska? Montana? North Dakota?
  
  Further, I would argue that plenty of US customers would like their devices to work wherever they go, including outside of the US. For users with large data sets, that is going to be tough to do without bigger internal storage options or more robust external storage capabilities.
  
  WiFi-ac, fully functioning USB 3.0, mSD slots, etc. are amongst the many ways to achieve this.
  
  I applaud Google for attacking the $200 price point. This is a major improvement over the extremely limited capabilities of the Kindle Fire (I own one) and the too-expensive-for-what-it-does iPad.
  
  Let's hope that someone attacks the $300 price point with an equal vengeance... and adds the missing functionality. If no one ponies up and offers it, I'll probably buy this for the same reason I bought the Kindle: $200 mobile access to a browser in a compact frame - when I can find a signal.
  
  While I'm dreaming, wouldn't it be great if you bought a software license and it was device agnostic? Does anyone think that my Acrobat Pro licenses will work on this? MS Office? Yeah, right. But, that would be worth at least $400 for such a device, dontcha think?
  
  So in conclusion, before you purport to speak universally for all users of such a device, I would suggest you get a passport and actually use it regularly. Let us know how that WiFi thing worked out for you when you were traveling and wishing for access to that big data set.
  
  -

• festrada007 - Wednesday, August 8, 2012 - link

  If you love the Cloud, why dont you marry it...?

• Kognos - Saturday, October 13, 2012 - link

  You folks who think that the cloud is the complete solution obviously never go anywhere interesting! just back from a great vacation in the US west, Yosemite, canyon country etc. Internet and cell coverage very intermittent at best.
  
  We need choices, not people telling us that one size fits all.

• euler007 - Friday, June 29, 2012 - link

  Cost is a reasonable explanation.
  
  Take the percentage of the users that require this feature and the cost of this feature. Then add in all the other features with similar percentage of users that require it. Now you have a 300-400$ tablet.

• CFWhitman - Tuesday, July 3, 2012 - link

  Most one hundred dollar or so Chinese tablets come with USB-OTG, a micro-SD Card slot, and an HDMI connector, so no, I don't think cost is really a big issue. This is especially true for the USB storage feature since it doesn't require any additional hardware.

• CFWhitman - Tuesday, July 3, 2012 - link

  Why would you need USB storage if everything is in the cloud? Oh, perhaps to get the pictures from your camera's SD card.
  
  Not to mention the fact that I go places all the time where "the cloud" is not available.