Hello, My question is: is there ANY smartphone or PDA that implements the USB on the Go specification? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB_On-The-Go)
The telephones today are true computers squezed into a very small place. Not so expensive phones (200 Euros) already have ARM 11, 369 MHz CPU and 256 MB of RAM+ROM. Just about 8 years ago or even less, many of us had computers with CPU's clocked at 400-500 MHz, with 128-256 MB of RAM. Those computers had operating systems able to handle a lot of hardware peripherals.
So I really expect the modern phones to allow users to connect peripherals to them. And it can't be hard, since PDA's already allow connecting WiFi and other types of cards by SDIO or CFIO, since lots of years ago.
I really wish my phone to allow me to connect to it a standard USB keyboard, an USB mouse, an USB ethernet adapter (which would turn my phone into a great basic network testing device), a scanner, a printer, a pen drive, an external hard drive, a foto camera and other devices.
The hardware has the power to do that, the USB host specification exists, now all that we need is the operating system of the phones to support this.
Is there ANY platform allowing this? (Symbian, Windows Mobile, Android, OpenMoko etc). Is there any platform that at least PLANS to implement this feature in the near or even in the distant future?
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LisaG
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Reged: 07/11/02
Posts: 7884
Loc: Texas
It isn't really a platform feature so much as one that a manufacturer decides to include (most smartphone platforms can handle it). The HTC Advantage is one of the very few that has this feature. But it's not exactly s standard phone format device. http://www.mobiletechreview.com/HTC-Advantage-X7510.htm .
-------------------- Lisa Gade Editor in Chief, MobileTechReview
Well, it seems the Windows Mobile is somewhat ahead of the other platforms. Now it only needs that one manufacturer will make a smartphone with full USB host capabilty and write a few drivers for some regular USB peripherals (keyboards, mice etc). This will start an avalanche, enthusiast users will write drivers for all kind of other peripherals and this will push the peripherals manufacturers to make themselves the drivers for that device's operating system.
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