Mobile phone stand/USB hub

The USB Hub Plus Smartphone Stand is a phone-stand that connects to Android or iPhones and then (somehow) allows them to access files stored on other USB drives connected to the hub. No idea if this is any good, but at $11, it may be worth a flutter. I’d be interested in knowing whether this… READ THE REST

Presumably it’s just a regular USB OTG adaptor - you can pick these up for a couple of pounds on Amazon:

Compatibility will depend on your phone (google for “{phonename} USB OTG”) but if you’ve got an Android phone made in the last couple of years, and it supports OTG, then it should allow you to connect a mouse and keyboard without worry.

Magically, a mouse pointer appears, and everything!

1 Like

Cory, wouldn’t it make more sense to buy one and try it out before posting? We all know you’re rich :slight_smile: enough to buy one. A posting w/ some test data is worth a lot more than a photo.

iOS doesn’t have any mouse implementation, so no, a mouse won’t work on Apple stuff. But keyboards will work.

I think it’s a USB OTC adapter with a passive USB hub. What you can do with an OTG cable and $5 USB hub.

It doesn’t even have a charger.

If you jailbreak it, you can use a mouse with iOS:

I’d be hesitant to trust the overall design of a device that physically blocks part of the touchscreen like that photo seems to show.

Not only can you use a mouse and keyboard, you can also use USB>Serial converters, and talk directly to (eg) a cisco switch, so now I don’t need to carry an old laptop into the data center, just a tablet, or even my phone.
It also works with some ODB cables, so you can connect to your car and pull data out.
In short, you can use your phone as the general purpose computer it really is.

1 Like

Also; the product pictures are quite misleading - there’s no way any of the phones will work in the way they’re showing when in portrait mode as the USB/30-pin/lightning cable will be sticking out of the bottom of the phone, and they haven’t shown it connected properly in the landscape examples either.

I’ve no doubt it’ll work - I’ve made a functioning USB OTG cable myself; it’s easy enough, just short two of the USB micro pins in the cable housing (putting various resistors instead of the short gives different functionality, like car dock/desk clock mode), but I can’t help thinking this is a bad implementation of an idea.

e: but yeah, USB OTG is one of the more awesome aspects of modern smartphones. Even things like USB headsets/soundcards/joypads work.

This topic was automatically closed after 5 days. New replies are no longer allowed.