Tired of giant Samsung USB adapters? Make your own tiny one
The USB connection kit for the Samsung Galaxy Tab series is very nice, but as the main picture in my review clearly demonstrates, it isn’t exactly the smallest solution out there. With the adapter and a flash drive plugged into the side of a Galaxy Tab, you have something that is quite a bit more unwieldy than the Tab is on its own. While surfing around on everyone’s favorite crap service/low prices-site, Dealextreme, I came across an OEM adapter that isn’t just cheaper than the official kit at a low $2.90 (despite being USB only, no SD without a reader in between), it’s also more intelligently designed with a flexible cable in between the two connectors.
I bought one and got it a couple of weeks back. It worked fine (not always a given with products from that place) and it was less awkward to use than the original. Still, it wasn’t exactly a hand-in-glove type deal. I found my hot glue gun and went to work, and basically just glued one piece on top of the other, and hid the cable in another blob of black hot glue. The resulting adapter looks a bit awkward on its own, but once plugged in it sends all the cables and USB drives plugged into it down the side of the Tab instead of pointing straight out. You can see how that looks in the main picture to this article. Due to the USB part being raised above the device, it will even still work with wide devices like card readers. I tend to prefer transferring files to a flash drive rather than using the Tab 7.0 Plus MTP mode for transferring files to it directly when I want to e.g. watch a video on it, and this makes it a lot easier to hold and use when something is plugged into the USB port. Best of all, at the price of those adapters, you won’t lose much. I’ve ordered a few more to see if I can eliminate some of the original plastic housing and make it even smaller.
