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Comment by avian | Hacker News Reader

Does this actually work for you with a recent Android phone?

On my Moto G, this is more like: connect USB cable, wait 2 minutes while the computer is mounting the MTP. See it fail. Unconnect cable, reconnect. Forgot to unlock screen on the phone. Unconnect cable, reconnect. Wait another 2 minutes. The drive mounts now. Select photos. Copy. Paste to hard drive. Wait 10 minutes while the computer is copying the files. See it fail with a cryptic error.

Utterly useless. From what I hear, this is a normal experience since Android switched from using USB mass storage to MTP.

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I use an app called AirDroid (https://www.airdroid.com/) to copy files to/from my Moto G. It works reasonably well in my experience.

I have no idea what the benefit of MTP over USB mass storage was imagined to be.

> I have no idea what the benefit of MTP over USB mass storage was imagined to be.

Not having to unmount the phone when disconnecting, IIRC.

I looked at that but have you seen the permissions required. Wow. Change my contact list? I'm sure they have good reasons but I'm struggling with that for something I'm going to use for copying files.

While I've gotten MTP to work ok its not a first class experience. Folders with many files (like photos) can take a long time to even start copying. I assumed that MTP was done due avoid patents over FAT32 with Microsoft or something.

It's because you can edit contacts(edit, add, etc) from their web interface.

I use it exclusively to transfer files, much faster then connecting a cable.

The reason they need permission to change your contact list is because Airdroid can change your contact list from your phone.

But isn't Android software and the APIs designed to be extremely modular? This could be solved through a separate app that enables the functionality. Maybe if Google's app store supported this idea more extensively, we could choose the options that an app has access to instead of just trusting they're not going to abuse the privilege.

The fact that the phone can continue to access storage while connected, so apps can get to their data (or apps moved to SD can continue to run).

I can relate to this. I transfer my files via SSH/SFTP when I have to because MTP is just completely unreliable, sometimes it works but most of the time it's just unpredictable.

On a Nexus 5, sure, it works. Both Mac and PC. Sister's Moto G, same thing.

Once on my Nexus 5 i got an error about copying a folder with lots of contents (some kind of backup i did i think). It forced me to archive it via a file manager on the phone and then transfer that instead. Only happened once though, and on Mac, which needs a standalone app to communicate with the device.

Samsung Galaxy S4 + Ubuntu. Plug USB, wait up to 2 sec to get folder on desktop + notification, copy files in few more seconds, done.

OS X Yosemite, OnePlus One with latest firmware: momental MTP mount and import with Photos app, no failures so far, no cryptic errors.

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