This $8 adapter is all it takes to make a USB stick useful in the iPhone age

When I purchased my

Samsung Galaxy S9
back in 2018, the phone came with a free accessory in the box: a Samsung-branded USB-A to USB-C On-The-Go (OTG) adapter. The company had only recently begun switching its mobile devices over from USB Micro-B to USB-Type-C, and this adapter was a thoughtful inclusion to help

smooth over the transition process
.

The included adapter’s support for OTG was (and still is) important — as a USB specification, OTG allows the accessory to facilitate communication between host and peripheral devices without any compatibility issues. For the most part, I didn’t make much use of my adapter back when I was rocking the S9 on a daily basis. This all changed recently, when I was spring-cleaning and stumbled upon my old collection of 2012-era

USB flash drives
.

I decided it would be a fun opportunity to look back at all my digital files and documents from when I was a junior high school and senior high school student. For context, even though cloud storage solutions existed back then, it was commonplace to locally store essays and slideshow presentations on a USB stick, which is precisely how I operated at the time.

Of course, tech has come a long way since the early 2010s, and none of my personal devices include a USB-A port anymore. That’s where my handy USB OTG adapter comes in — without a hitch, it lets me not only access my old files on my modern PC, but also on my USB-C-enabled

iPhone
and

Android tablet
. In other words, the same USB stick that I previously plugged into the Windows XP desktop tower at my old school, can just as easily be plugged into my state-of-the-art

iPhone 15 Pro
.

How do I connect my old USB flash drive to my mobile device?

All it takes is a single, cheap USA-A to USB-C adapter

Pocket-lint / Apple / Samsung

To connect an old-school USB flash drive to a modern mobile device like an iPhone, an iPad, or an Android, follow these steps:

1. Ensure that you have access to an OTG-certified USB-A to USB-C adapter, and that your mobile device has at least one free USB-C port.
2. Plug the male end of the USB stick into the female end of the USB-A to USB-C adapter.
3. Next, plug the male end of the USB-A to USB-C adapter directly into the USB-C port of your phone or tablet.

In terms of USB-A to USB-C adapters, there are plenty of options on the market aside from the Samsung model that I highlighted. I’d avoid springing for a no-name brand — despite the compelling prices, you’re gambling in terms of quality. Many of these options lack OTG support, utilize the slow USB 2.0 transfer speed standard, and don’t feature safety features or proper power delivery controllers.

Some adapter models I’d personally recommend include:

Related

4 lesser-known things I do with old USB drives

USB drives can do so much more than just store PDFs and Word docs.

USB stick ubiquity is in the rear-view mirror

These days, USB flash drives have more or less fallen into obscurity. Sure, there are still

plenty of potentially clever use cases
for your old thumb drives, but as a primary storage medium, their days are all but numbered. The sheer convenience of cloud-based storage solutions like Dropbox, OneDrive, Google Drive and iCloud have evidently taken the wind out of the humble USB stick’s sail. At the same time, wireless transfer protocols like AirDrop and Quick Share have reduced the need to rely on local storage for cross-device access as a whole.

For longer-term local storage
, external hard disk drives (HDDs) remain the best bang-for-your-buck, while flash-based

solid state drives
(SSDs) are more robust, reliable, and capacity-dense than their USB stick counterparts. Still, I have a nostalgic attachment to the thumb drive era, and there’s something about plugging my old USB stick into my modern smartphone that tickles my nerdy heartstrings.

Related

Apple (sort of) sells a USB-A-to-C cable now, but there’s no fruit logo in sight

Apple-owned Beats has launched colorful new woven charging cables in several plug formats.