I work for a software development company and we currently have a project which involves reading some information from a USB device connected to a mobile phone. In the past week we've bought a Vodafone VDA IV phone because of it's USB client/host v1.1 capabilities - it even says in the manual that the "USB Host only supports the following devices: UID devices (mouse, keyboard) and self-powered/low-power storage devices (flash disk, hard drives)". That sounds like exactly what we need

The problem is i can't get any USB devices to be recognised by the phone. I've tried connecting my Logitech USB keyboard, MS Explorer 4 mouse, my USB pen drive, and our USB sensor device but nothing happens. All of these USB devices work fine in Windows XP, and the VDA phone will sync and charge perfectly using the USB cable supplied. I've also made sure that the activesync process wasn't running on the phone when i've tried to connect the other USB devices.

The cable we're using is the sync cable we got with the phone coupled to a gender changer which allows us to plug one of the USB devices in directly (i've used a multimeter to make 100% sure we have the wires round the right way ). I've also tried putting a powered USB hub in between the phone and the USB device (thus removing the need for the gender changer) with no success.

I think i've been through every program and menu in the phone's start menu, plus i've taken a good look through the directories on the phone. I'm actually wondering if there's something in the phone's registry in need to alter to get USB working - i've been through all of the USB entries in the registry and there's nothing obvious that is an on/off switch or a power saving mode that would disable it. In the connection manager there's something to turn the phone on/off and bluetooth on/off, but nothing that i can see that would disable USB.

I would really like to hear if anyone has a VDA IV / Graphite phone that works with one of the above types of USB device, or even if you have one and you can't get it to work either (makes me feel less daft ).

Also in Windows XP when you plug in a HID USB device, you get the little notification near the clock - if you can get your USB devices to work, do you get a similar sort of thing appearing on the phone?

Cheers muchly

I don't think you'll get anywhere with this. Smartphones are not generally host devices and do not pust power out of the usb ports. Head over to xda-developers.com where you will certainly find similar topics discussed.

Balls! double posted. Sorry