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3 Things You Can Do Without Using an OTG Cable on Your Phone, Even If It Doesn’t Support It.
We’ve talked enough about it in posts we’ve published on the Computer World blog, where the important OTG cable for any smartphone adds great features to your phone. We reviewed some of them in the post “5 Reasons to Buy an OTG Cable for Your Smartphone or Tablet,” where we highlighted the reasons that attract you to buy and use it. We also mentioned our experience using the OTG cable after purchasing it, about its important features and how to use them.
And all this is thanks to its provision of a USB port in the phone, allowing the insertion of USB devices such as a mouse, keyboard, flash drive, etc. However, OTG support is not available in all smartphones; it is available for modern phones, and some modern phones support it while others do not recognize anything that is installed in the OTG cable. But what if you could get some of the OTG features on the phone without the need to buy it, despite its cheap price? Yes, you can do that. Let’s see how.
Sure, no Android phone is without Wi-Fi technology, as it has become built-in in all phones for connecting to the internet. However, Wi-Fi has many other uses, as we presented a variety of them in the post “5 Other Uses of Wi-Fi in Your Smartphone Besides Browsing the Internet.” But one of the uses we did not mention is the ability to use it instead of buying an OTG cable. Through Wi-Fi, we can access the features that OTG offers without the need to use it.
1- Writing Text Using a Computer Keyboard
Sometimes you may need to connect your computer keyboard to your phone to write faster. If typing on the phone’s virtual keyboard is slow or the letters often overlap incorrectly, then the computer keyboard will work faster. If you want to connect the computer keyboard to your phone, you will find that the solution is to purchase an OTG cable to enable you to do that and connect the keyboard to the phone via USB. Is there another solution?
Yes, there is another better solution by relying on Wi-Fi and using the Remote Keyboard application on your phone. Install the application on the phone, then start it to display an “Inputmethod disabled” window, click OK, activate the Remote Keyboard application, then click OK, and then go back to the application again and click the “Select Keyboard” button at the top and choose Remote Keyboard from the menu. Note the IP and Port on the application interface, which you will use to connect the keyboard to the phone.
All you need to do is download the PuTTY tool to your computer from here, then enter the IP address under Host Name and the Port number indicated in the application, specify the Telnet connection type, and press Open below.
Clicking the Open button will display a black window as shown in the above image, where you can write anything to have it displayed on the phone. For example, you can use the Note app on the phone and write any text using the computer keyboard to see it being typed on the Note app. This can be used to reply to messages and perform other tasks instead of using the phone’s keyboard. The PuTTY black window also includes some shortcuts that can be used to facilitate usage.
2- Directly Transferring Files from a USB Flash Drive to the Phone
Another thing we sometimes need is to transfer or copy files from a USB flash drive to the phone. Usually, to do that, we either use Bluetooth on the phone and computer after inserting the flash drive, or use a USB cable to connect the computer to the phone and transfer the content from the flash drive. But there is a much faster way through the OTG cable, where files can be transferred directly from the flash drive to the phone without involving a computer. However, if it’s not available or your phone doesn’t support it, there is another solution.
The solution is the same as we explained in the post “How to Browse Computer Hard Drive Files from Your Android Phone Without Cables or Programs,” where we rely on the built-in sharing feature in Windows and the famous ES File Explorer app for file management on the Android phone. All you need to do is insert the flash drive into the computer, right-click on it, then go to Properties and, in the window that appears, go to the Sharing section, click on Advanced sharing, enable the Share this folder option, then OK to activate sharing for the flash drive.
Then, through your phone, open the ES File Explorer app, swipe the screen from left to right to display the options menu, click on the Network section, then on the LAN option, and the name of your computer will appear on the screen. Click on it, then enter the username and password associated with the Windows system.
After that, the drive letter will be displayed. In my case, the flash drive carries the letter F, so I will click on the F folder, and all the contents of the flash drive will be displayed. You can simply move or copy any file and add it to the phone’s internal or external memory using the ES File Explorer app.
3- Controlling the Phone with a Computer Mouse
As we know, smartphones allow full control of the phone using the computer mouse through the OTG cable, making it easier to use the phone and speed up tasks. Through the mouse cursor displayed on the phone screen, you can navigate between applications and control them as if you were using a computer.
However, you can connect the computer mouse to the phone without an OTG cable using a free application called DeskDock, which allows you to share your computer’s mouse with your Android phone. There is also a paid version that allows you to share the keyboard as well. After launching the application, you need to install the required Java program on your computer, which can be downloaded here and installed, then activate the USB Debugging option on the phone by going to Settings and enabling Developer options, then scrolling down to find the USB debugger or USB Debugging and activate it as well.
Now all you have to do is download the portable tool for the DeskDock application on your computer from here, then after downloading and extracting the tool, run the DeskDockServer file to display an icon in the taskbar at the bottom. Now, simply connect the phone to the computer via a USB cable, then open the DeskDock application on the mobile, click on the CONNECT button to connect the computer to the phone, and you will receive a notification confirming this, as shown in the image above.