Anyone know anything about Media Transfer Protocol / USB connectivity on smartphones?
Posted: Thu Sep 02, 2021 11:56 am
Every month I connect my phone (a Samsung A5) to my Windows laptop ( via the USB cable it came with) in order to move the pictures and videos onto the laptop to be backed up. This month, it doesn't work - the A5 is not discoverable by the laptop.
I always ensure that "USB Configuration" within Settings -> Developer Options is set to MTP (rather than "Charge this phone") but for some reason it simply isn't working anymore. Something must have changed within my phone software / settings, but I don't know what.
It's definitely not the laptop or the cable that are the issue as I've tried it with several and all have the same problem.
I've also tried all other options within "USB Configuration" but none of them make the phone discoverable.
I have tried using Samsung's own channels to enquire about the problem but their highly sophisticated teams of robots don't understand the nature of the issue, and no real person appears available to speak with. Thought I'd also try my luck here...
Does anyone else do this? In my opinion it seems deliberate - I feel like Samsung are trying to push users towards Cloud options for backup rather than enabling USB connectivity. It used to be that plugging in the phone to a PC enabled file transfer by default, then a few years ago this stopped working and you had to enable Developer Options in order to change the USB configuration. This seems like the logical next step but it's very user unfriendly!
I always ensure that "USB Configuration" within Settings -> Developer Options is set to MTP (rather than "Charge this phone") but for some reason it simply isn't working anymore. Something must have changed within my phone software / settings, but I don't know what.
It's definitely not the laptop or the cable that are the issue as I've tried it with several and all have the same problem.
I've also tried all other options within "USB Configuration" but none of them make the phone discoverable.
I have tried using Samsung's own channels to enquire about the problem but their highly sophisticated teams of robots don't understand the nature of the issue, and no real person appears available to speak with. Thought I'd also try my luck here...
Does anyone else do this? In my opinion it seems deliberate - I feel like Samsung are trying to push users towards Cloud options for backup rather than enabling USB connectivity. It used to be that plugging in the phone to a PC enabled file transfer by default, then a few years ago this stopped working and you had to enable Developer Options in order to change the USB configuration. This seems like the logical next step but it's very user unfriendly!