[Sussex] How to sort out "crippled" android on smart phone (samsung Galaxy Note 2).

Steve Dobson steve at dobbo.org
Tue Jan 15 07:31:57 UTC 2013


Hi John

On 14/01/13 21:09, John The Fatbloke wrote:
> After I posted the question, I found some of the stuff, like why google
> have dropped the USB mass storage, yet it still didn't make sense why
> they didn't just offer it as an add on type choice - surely they've got
> enough linux guru types in their fold to have worked out that it would
> be likely to cause issue...... but who really knows.....

There are drawbacks to mounting the SD card on a computer, Andorid has
to disable all those apps installed on the SD card.  It has too, while
the SD card is mounted on your computer that computer has unmitigated
access to the card and can do anything.  You could do anything to that
card, reformat it if you so wish.

So when you return the SD card to Android's control it then runs a media
scan to find out what is now on the card.  What have you installed, and
more importantly, what have you deleted?  Is the file system still
valid?  Many people just pull USB disks from their computers without
first unmounting them.  They are running the risk of corrupting the file
system if they do, but they are numpties after all, they don't know any
better.

That is why Google have moved to a technology that doesn't require that
the whole of your SD card is turned over to the computer.  Instead it
now get to control which files the computer can see, and what it can do
with them.  For your average numpty this is no bad thing.

The problem is that your average Linux system hasn't got the plumbing in
by default to just connect your phone together.  I have no doubt that
they soon will.

Steve

-- 
Steve "Dobbo" Dobson



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