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Samsung Galaxy S i9000 and Android 2.1 – enable file copy over USB as mass storage mode on OSX and Linux
September 4, 2010
File under android, technology
Samsung Galaxy S i9000 (Android 2.1) comes with Samsing Kies Windows software which is supposed to be used for copying files between your computer and the phone.
Naturally, this Windows software 1) is not very good 2) works on Windows only.
However, you can still mount the device as normal USB mass storage. Just set Settings -> Applications -> Development -> Allow USB debugging checkbox on and replug the USB cable. Then open the notifications menu (pull down the top bar on the home screen). Now there is new option USB Connected. Choose it and then choose Mount.
You should be able to access both the phone internal storage and microSD memory card in Finder / Nautilus.
I created directory /media/mp3 where I copied few music files from my computer. I was able to achieve 5 MB/s transfer rate from my Asus Eee 1005HA PC when writing files to phone internal memory. The phone music player was able to pick up them fine.
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Oh hell…
Samsung support forums http://forumuk.samsungmobile.com are problemtic. They let you input passwords character over 14 characters, but do not actually support it. They 1) truncate your password to 14 characters without telling you 2) store your password as plain text.
I must say Samsung support forums, this is very unprofessional!
Also Samsung support forums do not support + sign in email address.
The registration form is overly complex.
There also exist extra pop-up dialogs you need to keep confirming all the time…. aaargh
Forum posting does not work in Opera browser.
A slightly better solution:
For the first step do: set Settings -> About phone -> USB settings -> Mass storage choice, otherwise proceed as described, ie. ….. choose Mount.
Now, why they put that option in “About phone” I have no idea, but it might be a good idea to look there for other neat stuff. There’s a Media player choice there, but it does not work better with MTP (gnomad2) than Kies does.
Great find.
Of course, if all else failed, one could put the SD in a card reader and transfer files from there but that is more cumbersome I suppose.
Thanks, this really helped!
Thanks,I was having problems transferring large video files from My Galaxy S via Kies but I did this and it worked a treat and transferred quicker too
Google is my best friend, it can find the ones who had already solved my problems.
Thank You all.
But if there were a detailed manual …
Hi,
Thank you for comment. As far as I know it is the responsibility of your phone manufacturer to provide you a manual. I suggest you contact the shop from where you bought the phone and ask them to provide you a manual.
This was very useful, only a subtle correction with 2.3 to enable storage the option is ‘Connect Storage to PC’ rather than mount.