Problems with OTG

[Madthane]

Anyone else experiencing issues with OTG device not showing up in Storage Directory Folder?

It's frustrating that the OTG isn't being treated like an SD Card that is mounted. I could not play music files properly and it's not being compiled in my music player. Even in File Explorer, it is not even showing up properly.

I'm using a Samsung T5 2TB that is formated to exFAT because up until now there is no native support for even reading an NTFS formatted drive without installing any crap on Android.......

Here are the screenshots for my case. https://imgur.com/a/ATqKi

The screenshots involve one my phones which is an LG V20 that is a last gen flagship phone and is starting to kick my XZ Premium in a corner in terms of enjoyment as a daily media(video/music) driver. But I digress. At this point I'm just frustrated why it's behaving like this. I'll talk about my frustrations on XZ Premium's design in another thread.

For reference, I also tested a different OTG on a Samsung S7 and it is also treated as if it's a mounted SD Card and shows up in the Storage Folder.

So kindly, if anyone knows what's going on or has heard about an official statement about this, please do share. I will also contact the support for this and hope they have this issue in tabs.

Thank you very much in advance.

[Sensination]

God...your notification bar gave me eye cancer

[Madthane]

Wow. Thanks for the helpful input.... Is the community dead here or nobody bothers to use OTG at all?

Already contacted support and have not received a reply for days.

[manuel88]

u will get only  two solution from this community,  first  to try in safe mode and  second to reset using pc companion. soo please  don't expect  for anything else from here. really disappointing from sony. 

[Madthane]

First and foremost, I'd like to call onto anybody who can test this with their phones to see if they get the same issue.

I'm still experiencing this frustrating issue with how XZ Premium handles Portable Storages.

It becomes very frustrating when third party applications do not have easy access to the media files. I've been engaged in a long conversation with Sony Mobile representatives already and they dismiss the case by simply saying XZ Premium does not support OTG and that it is only capable of USB Host. Couple that statement and they throw you with this link.

https://support.sonymobile.com/us/xperiaxzpremium/kb/02310188027b445c5013d73c192e8007d3c/#gref

The fact that Sony's site kind of shoots itself in the foot with these two statements.

• Play music and videos stored on a USB stick or an external hard drive on your Xperia device.
• USB Mass Storage support for Xperia XZ Premium/XZ Premium Dual SIM

My hunch has always been about the Android OS screweing with the portable storage. Simply because of reasons that.
1) USB Mass storage is able to be accessed by system file managers and that all the files are visible.

2) Some media files can be played to an extent but in a very broken and inconvenient manner.

3) USB Mass storage is treated as a Portable Storage which should be treated the same as a mounted Micro SD Card.

Both Portable Storages are recognized and Listed on the Storage Settings

As shown above, my Samsung T5 SSD is recognized and can be explored using Android's System File Explorer. But anytime I open the files, they become really problematic as most of the times the file is not opened by the third party application as it somehow does not recognize it. So this made me curious and tried different file browsers to be able find out the directory of the USB Mass Storage. I stumbled upon Solid Explorer as ES File Explorer was having issues accessing an exFat drive.

Samsung T5 Portable SSD 2TB Formatted to exFat for easy access to various systems

 While fiddling around with Solid Explorer, I was able to find out the directory where the Portable Storages sits on. Mounted SD card is accessible on root/Storage while the USB Mass Storage is on root/mnt/media_rw.

SD Card is mapped on root/storage

USB Mass Storage is mapped on root/mnt/media_rw

 After checking around this particular directory, the root/mnt/media_rw is only accessible with root access. It prevents third party applications from accessing it which makes sense to the issues I'm currently experiencing. Now I'm no expert with regards to this matter but I stumbled upon this article.
https://source.android.com/devices/storage/traditional#support_usb_media

Which says, 

USB media support

Android 6.0 supports portable storage devices which are only connected to the device for a short period of time, like USB flash drives. When a user inserts a new portable device, the platform shows a notification to let them copy or manage the contents of that device.

In Android 6.0, any device that is not adopted is considered portable. Because portable storage is connected for only a short time, the platform avoids heavy operations such as media scanning. Third-party apps must go through the Storage Access Framework to interact with files on portable storage; direct access is explicitly blocked for privacy and security reasons.

If the case that Storage Access Framework needs to be used by Third-party apps then how come an SD card which is listed as Portable Storage can be easily accessed by Third Party Applications with the right use of Permission request. If someone knowledgable about this can shed light into it, please do so.

Google Play Music Unable to access the USB Mass Storage

Phonograph unable to access the USB mass storage

Phonograph's file browser confirms that USB Mass Storage is not mapped to root/storage

 As of now I still believe that their is something wrong with how the OS manages the USB Mass Storage. I still can't believe that the answer lies to a simple OTG support issue. However if someone can englighten me with this one, feel free to do so. 

So far, Sony Mobile Philippines has shot my case down as they believe that it is an OTG issue and that no escalation is necessary. They even said that they only stand by what Sony Mobile US has said and for that I will contact US support for this matter.

Food for thought though, I have come across multiple posts about similar issues on other devices. Seems like it's an inherrent problem on most devices with near Vanilla android framework. Once again to anyone who's kind enough to spare some time to post similar tests, kindly try and see if your external usb storage is only being mounted on root/mnt/media_rw and not on root/Storage directory. My test consists of a USB Storage that is formatted on exFat. In my experience, only Solid Explorer was able to fetch the directory details. Feel free to test out other applications.

Thanks.

[Madthane]

I truly believe and understand that there is no perfect phone. This phone has been getting updates really fast, however the support is just horrendous the features of this phone does not justify the over all cluckiness of daily usage.

I had an open issue with tech support for 5 months with back and forth e-mails that barely have any helpful responses.  The issue I have was already posted here.

/t5/Xperia-XZ-Premium/Portable-Storage-Issues/m-p/1311290#M12857

I just spoke with customer support on the line again after awaiting their follow up for a month or so. Seems like they were just ready shut me down and do nothing about the case even though I requested for my case to be forwarded to a department that knows about it. They just gave a generic response of "We do not support it".

I have already gave them details about it but it seems that they are just really not gonna do anything to address my concern. So as a final measure, I have forwarded this to the developers in hopes for some proper response. If I recieve no response then I guess Sony's mobile division really does not care about it's customers. It's funny since my concern is something that is related to media consumption. Something that this phone has been marketed to. Sony even has it's own Hi-Res Media store. However, the storage available in this device will not be able to keep up with the file sizes those media files generate.

If someone wanted a true experience for Media consumption, I would suggest something like LG V20 or LG V30 since it can support up to 2TB of external storage which I guess helps with treating External USB storages as mounted SD cards. However, just prepare to get the slowest updates ever as the manufacturer is notorious for being slow at releasing firmware.

At this point, I just wanted to share my feedback since Sony's US Tech Support played a trick on me did not give me a chance to answer surveys for feedback. If this gets deleted, then whatever. I'll just wait for a few days and see if the developers contact me. If not, I will be rooting my device. Which by the way Sony has a security counter measure for. If you root your device, you will lose your DRM keys. You lose your DRM keys, you lose access to proprietary Sony software like the Camera Application. Good thing we have the internet for that. I won't speak about it here but you guys can probably google it.

[Marecjib]

Same problem here.. Please help enable OTG in XZ premium.