We’re always being offered new ways of getting the photos stored on our phones or tablets into the cloud, where they can be shared with other devices. However, there are times this isn’t convenient, either because there’s no Wi-Fi, or we just don’t want to eat through our data in such a frivolous manner. Sure, a USB cable can help if you want to transfer some snaps to a friend’s computer, but do you carry one of those around with you?
Step forward Sony with its new two-in-one USB flash drive, which is small enough to be carried around at all times, and won’t put a strain on your data allowance if you want to share any pictures. The drive has a standard USB 2.0 connector on one end, just as you would expect, but on the opposite side is a micro USB connector.
Micro USB ports are standard on most Android smartphones and tablets these days, where they’re used for charging, but by plugging in Sony’s flash drive, you can transfer photos, videos and just about any other file type either across to your phone, or back to the drive. This opens many other possibilities, from quickly adding music, to uploading photos to your phone for editing.
It’s compatible with any device which has USB On The Go connectivity, running Android 4.0.3 or later, however Android 4.4 isn’t supported just yet. You can buy the drives with 8GB, 16GB or 32GB of storage memory, plus you’ll need a file manager app installed on your device to make swapping files much easier.
This handy little gadget is reasonably priced at $20 for the 8GB and $30 for the 16GB, but the 32GB model costs considerably more at $63. All three will go on sale through Sony stores in January next year.
