OTG cables are special data cables that make your mobile phone or tablets the primary computing device rather than a storage device. What does this mean? This means that your phone or tablet becomes a computer. OTG stands for On-The-Go and it lets you connect peripheral devices to your phone such as a keyboard, mouse, hard-disk drives, etc. But that’s not the only use or advantage of an OTG cable.
OTG cables have a myriad of uses other than being used as a mouse or keyboard connector. Here are some of the best uses of the cable and how using an OTG cable can get you out of a very tricky situation and save you a lot of money.
The uses of OTG cables
Here are some of the common and non-common uses of an OTG cable:
Connecting mouse and keyboards
You can use your mobile or a tablet as a laptop or computer for minor tasks using the OTG cable to connect the mouse or keyboard and control the device. OTG cables also support wireless mice and keyboards. Just make sure that your mobile phone supports OTG or not, but most of the modern devices do support it.
Connecting console controllers
If you want to play games on your phone or your tablet (since mobile games are getting better in both gameplay and graphics), you can take the OTG cable and connect a Playstation or Xbox controller. You can also connect any other third-party controller to play games.
Connecting macros or other peripherals
Not just mouses and controllers, but you can connect any compatible peripheral devices that are specialized for certain processes. For example, if you want to record yourself singing, you can connect a compatible microphone and use it to record your voice. You can also connect musical devices, etc to use it with the phone.
One can connect a DSLR camera to use it with the mobile phone. These cables can also connect to a USB dongle to use a 4G or 5G network. Even printers can be used with this cable. Why would anyone not want these “Swiss knife” cables?
Charging other phones
The reason why I say that one should also have an OTG cable is because of this. OTG cable can be used to charge one phone with another. All you have to do is connect to the OTG cable to the mobile phone (power source) and use the USB charger to connect it with the phone that needs to be charged.
Imagine if you are stuck in a situation where you have another phone at the full percentage and you need to get just a little bit of that juice on your phone. How convenient an OTG cable would make the situation.
Use HDD/ Flash storage
Perhaps the most common use of the OTG cable is to access portable storage such as hard disk drives, SSDs, or flash drives such as pen drives using nothing but your phone. This cable, in a way, allows expansion of your phone’s storage as you can dump all the movies and other stuff in your flash drive and access it whenever you want, without using the PC.
How it can save you a lot of money and protect your data
I recently got into a problem and OTG was the blessing I received from my ideas. I have an old phone, from early 2016. The phone’s screen is cracked, no touch response but the display works fine. Being ignorant before, I did not store my data in the cloud and hence, all the data in that phone is locked (since I can’t open the lock screen, I cannot access the phone).
The option I had was to fix the screen. That would have cost me a few Benjamin Franklin and I didn’t want the phone, so that would have been a waste. And that is when the idea struck my mind.
I got myself an OTG cable for just $2 and that too a good one. Connected my mouse and opened the phone. Uploaded all the data in the cloud. I saved all my data and saved hundreds of dollars at the same time. Isn’t OTG great? This concludes the article. You can read more articles like this and learn about new things, all tech related:
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