It was Albert Einstein who said once about Life's really big problems : 'When the solution is simple, you can hear God thinking." Some of the greatest scientific challenges have finally been reduced by great thinkers into a startlingly simple solution. I don't want to overhype the latest USB drive launched by SanDisk, but seems to me, it falls into that rare category of a starkly elegant solution to a problem that has bugged most of us who have tried to swap data -- photos, music, movie clips, office files -- between a handheld device like a phone or a tablet and a PC of any kind.
The geniuses who thought up all those phone operating systems including Android, apparently forgot to make allowance for this very common and frequent requirement: how to upload or download files from phone to laptop or vide versa.
There is no easy way because the micro USB connector that comes with most portable devices doesn't mate with standard USP port of desktops, laptops and Most of us have to get around the problem by mailing the files to ourselves then opening the mail on the other device -- speak of inefficiency and waste!
SanDisk is as far as I know, the first to come up with a USB drive that provides a solution that will make you say:"Why didn't they think of that before?!" The SanDisk Ultra Dual USB drive comes in three capacities from 16 GB to 64 GB. It offers a micro USB connector on one side and a standard USB 2.0 on the other. You stick the micro connector into your phone ( almost all popular brands will fit); copy the files you want to transfer from phone to drive. Then stick it into a laptop or desktop PC using the standard connector and transfer the files. That's it.
Yes, I know, you can achieve this by carrying extra Micro USB -to-Standard USB cables, with a male to female connector thrown in -- but how much simpler the SanDisk dual is!
The Dual USB drive costs from Rs 1199 to Rs 3800 for the 16 GB to 64 GB sizes.
Small note of caution. While the drive will work with the vast majority of phones and tablets, there are a few which use a slightly thicker and wider micro USB connector which the literature calls Micro AB or mini USB depending on where you're looking. I have one make of tablet with this connector and slightly older phones might come with this ... in which case you are back to the old game of multiple convertor cables. Also SanDisk's dual drive is USB 2.0... and I'm guessing they won't wait long before launching a USB 3.0 version. More info here
Anand Parthasarathy , Bangalore, April 14 2014