PSA: Nexus 5 Supports USB OTG Out Of The Box

PSA: Nexus 5 supports USB OTG out of the box

BY Rajesh Pandey

Rajesh Pandey

Rajesh is a 26-year old freelance writer from Kolkata, India. He loves to tinker around with his Android devices and flash custom ROMs on them....

All Articles by Rajesh Pandey

Published 6 Nov 2013

Why trust Greenbot

We maintain a strict editorial policy dedicated to factual accuracy, relevance, and impartiality. Our content is written and edited by top industry professionals with first-hand experience. The content undergoes thorough review by experienced editors to guarantee and adherence to the highest standards of reporting and publishing.

One handy feature that most Android devices have nowadays is USB OTG (On-The-Go). Using an OTG converter or cable, users can directly connect external keyboard, mouse, game controllers, storage drives and even external hard disks.

Last year, there was quite an outrage when it was discovered that the Nexus 4 does not support USB OTG. While later on developers where able to add support for OTG using custom kernels, the implementation was wonky at best and required the use of an external power source. The lack of USB OTG on the Nexus 4 was because of the modem being connected to the device over USB.

Thankfully, the Nexus 5 has no such issues and fully supports USB OTG right out of the box. This means that you can easily plug in and use external keyboards, mouse, DLSR cameras and more. While external HDDs are also supported, only the FAT32 formatted ones will work right out of the box. To read/write to NTFS partition, users need to use either a custom kernel or use an app like StickMount that requires root access.

Anyways, the inclusion of USB OTG on the Nexus 5 should please a lot of potential owners out there. It also opens up the possibilities for some serious DIY projects and hacks.