Samsung Moment and MacBook Pro (Snow Leopard)
Posted by Greg Bulmash in Gadgets & GizmosI got my Samsung Moment this afternoon and have been enjoying exploring it. I finally got around to connecting it to my laptop via the included mini-USB cable. While it is getting current via the connection and shows it's charging, it is not, OTOH, seeming to get data. My laptop doesn't see the phone and the phone is not displaying the USB icon to indicate that it's connected to a computer via USB.
I'll be researching this and trying to figure out how to get my Android phone and Mac laptop to see each other. In the meantime, I figured I'd set a placeholder blog post now so it can get indexed into the search engines. Perhaps if anyone else finds a solution before I do, they'll stumble upon this page and leave a comment with some useful information.
Update: The Next Evening:
If you read the comments below, you'll see some of the things I tried. A USB mounting program still required the phone to recognize that a USB connection existed, which it didn't.
I hooked it to a WinXP laptop and got the two to see each other without a problem, transferred some files. So it's a problem with the Mac or some miscommunication with the Mac.
The image above is a screen cap of my system profiler app. It shows that my Macbook Pro is seeing the phone, identified as SAMSUNG_Android, but the phone isn't seeing the machine. I've rebooted the phone with the machine connected to it. I've rebooted the machine with the phone connected to it. Still I can't get the phone to recognize that it's connected to a computer.
It's definitely getting current via the connection. I charged it from 60% to full via the USB connection to my Mac.
I've posted a query to the community forums at Sprint's site. We'll see if we get a a response.
Update: Sunday Morning:
The thread over at the Sprint forums has delivered in part. We've determined it's not the Mac hardware because other respondents in the thread have been able to pair it up with Windows and Linux running in virtual machines on their MacBook Pro laptops. So there's some incompatibility occurring with Android and Snow Leopard.
So the question is whether the phone's software needs to be patched, whether Snow Leopard needs to be patched, or if (as I'm hoping), there's a simple config change you can make on OS X that will solve the problem. We'll see.
Update: Sunday Night:
SOLVED! I was going deep through the Moment's menus and found a kludge/workaround that is at least getting the phone to recognize a connection exists and giving me the external drive functionality so I can transfer files back and forth through the USB connection without having to pull the battery, pull the Micro SD card, and plug the card into a reader/adapter.
How to Connect your Samsung Moment to your Mac
Entries (RSS)
I have the same problem running the exact same set up.
I read somewhere that the moment doesn't support usb mounting. We have to take the sd card out I believe. Weird thing is, Android vanilla is supposed to support usb mounting. Not 1.5 maybe?
I found a program called "Mount USB" in the Android marketplace. It's supposed to mount your micro sd card so your computer treats it as a removeable drive. I installed it, connected my phone to my laptop, and ran the program. It said "please connect your phone to USB first."
It shows that it's charging, so it's getting the power from the cable. It's not seeming to get the data. I'm wondering if it's the phone or if it's the cable. I have some old USB to mini-usb cables that came with digital cameras, but the small USB port on the phone is smaller than the small USB ports on the cameras. So unless I go buy a new cable, I can't test that theory.
Now, with my Treo, I'd just pop the card out and put it into a USB reader. No problem. I didn't transfer files so often that it was an issue. OTOH, with this, you have the card under the battery, so you have to remove the battery to get at it. Generally, though, I don't think there will be a great need to do large involved file transfers on any sort of regular basis, so I'm not going to die without USB connectivity.
The one other option I've found, but have not tried, is that there is a Samba ( SMB ) app for free in the Android marketplace, so I could conceivably use the local WiFi network to do file transfers. It's going to be significantly slower than a wired connection via USB, but for small files it could be less hassle. I'll give it a try soon and post my results.
Well, I've determined it's not the cable and not the phone. I hooked it up to my wife's XP laptop. The USB icon came up on the phone and the PC recognized the phone as a removeable drive, though it said there was nothing in it. I used MountUSB to mount the internal MicroSD card and it showed up in Windows Explorer. I was able to look at a couple of photos and videos I'd made of my kids.
I then edited a photo of my kid in his Halloween costume down to screen size and saved it to the card. While the card is mounted for transfer, it's invisible to your phone. I ran MountUSB again and it unmounted the card from my PC and the phone had access to it again. I pulled up the Gallery and was able to view the photo without problem.
It looks now like the issue is either with my specific laptop or with Mac. So I'm going to have to investigate further.
Hi Greg,
Ive been trying to connect my phone to my computer also, ive followed your instructions downloading the "mountUSB" app, and it still dosent work. Ive connected it to a vista computer, xp computer, and 2000 computer and one will work. The computer has discoverd it as a "samsung_android" but then it tries to find software to run it. I have both let it look for the software, and also tried the "mountUSB" as soon as the window pops up that it has been recognized. Please help.....
Sincerly,
Christopher Moran
Christopher. If I can't duplicate the problem, I can't solve it. Additionally, my problem was with connecting my phone to my Mac, which I did solve. Perhaps that solution will work for you, and that's going to the Settings menu of the phone, going into the Applications submenu of that, then the Development submenu of that, and turning on USB debugging. If that doesn't help you, I'm out of options.