Sony Announces double-ended USB Drive

Sony announced an interesting double-ended USB drive last week, intended to take a micro-USB to USB-female adapter out of the equation when using USB on-the-go (OTG) with your mobile device.

The SA series USB drive is a single small flash drive with one side sporting a full USB connector and the other side being a micro-USB connector. The idea is that you plug the full sized connector into your PC, while the other end goes into your smartphone or tablet (not simultaneously, though).

It’s not like a USB data/charging cable, rather like a flash drive, so the primary functionality isn’t data transfer like you would with a cable, but data storage. I doubt connecting both ends simultaneously will be a good idea, probably ruining the drive. Think of it simply as a flash drive that you can connect to your USB OTG enabled Android device without needing an adapter cable, making things simpler.

The advantage is that you can quickly share files en-masse, without having to pair using Bluetooth, and transferring data from your PC can be asynchronous.

Sony also plans to launch an app called File Manager on the Google Play Store. It’ll be a general purpose file manager for Android (4.0.3 and above), which will likely be accessible to users without Sony devices or this particular SA series USB drive.

The drive will launch in the US in January, though the indicated prices are absurd, to say the least. $20 (Rs 1200) for an 8GB drive is a bit much, and $63 (Rs 3900) for 32GB is just insane. An average 32GB flash drive costs Rs 1500 after all. The SA series isn’t even USB 3.0 capable, so I’m completely bewildered about the price.

So, while I hope dual-ended drives like these do make it to Indian shores, I  hope they leave the absurd prices behind and come to the proverbial table with something more realistic.