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Consumer Gear VR Micro USB Port

TWhite
Explorer
I've read reports from people using the S6 Innovator Edition being able to equip a USB OTG cable to a controller and have it function perfectly. Now on the consumer version it seems it won't function at all. Why would Samsung/Oculus drop a fully functional micro-USB port if they had it working just fine months ago and put it on the device with the intention of gaining functionality? This seems ridiculous and pointless to me.
CPU: i7 3770k 4.6Ghz GPU: EVGA GTX 780
12 REPLIES 12

Anonymous
Not applicable
if you're plugging anything in to the usb port do so BEFORE plugging in the phone.

teamgt19
Honored Guest
shhhh before they fix it and make it totally stupid and force you to buy a $70 controller which I did the Samsung one.. don't get it get a steelseries I'm, going to return and exchange the analong and dpad on the Samsung is too strange.

DaRkL3AD3R
Honored Guest
"scottsquires" wrote:
if you're plugging anything in to the usb port do so BEFORE plugging in the phone.


On the consumer version this no longer works. Which poses the question, why have a fully functional micro-USB port for developers to work with on the Innovator Edition but then drop it for consumer? Freaking pointless. I'm beyond disappointed that I can't use any of my fully functional controllers all because Oculus/Samsung left a few wires out of the port.

DOgi
Honored Guest
I guess it's because using usb port for that purpose could increase chance of dismounting it from a hardware board. So devs are are trying to eliminate the risk.

teamgt19
Honored Guest
can you hook up a otg usb memory stick to the consumer gear vr? I want to use it to store all my movies since there is no expanded memory

cjgee68
Honored Guest
So I suppose this means we also can't utilize the GearVR port as an external SD Card reader, huh?

Arnoud_H
Explorer
Using the USB port for mass storage (USB/SD/etc) has been never possible. What they changed in the Consumer Version of the Gear VR is that they have removed the USB hub feature that would enable you to hook up a controller or external input device through the USB port.

The reason is very simple: this is another feature that was dropped because of cost saving. I would guess that less that 5% (and probably even that is optimistic) of the Gear VR users would ever hook up any USB input device, so this was probably an easy thing to kill.

There are a lot of positive things to say about the new Gear VR, but in essence it is really a low cost (but evolved) version of the Innovator versions.

cjgee68
Honored Guest
"Arnoud_H" wrote:
Using the USB port for mass storage (USB/SD/etc) has been never possible. What they changed in the Consumer Version of the Gear VR is that they have removed the USB hub feature that would enable you to hook up a controller or external input device through the USB port.

The reason is very simple: this is another feature that was dropped because of cost saving. I would guess that less that 5% (and probably even that is optimistic) of the Gear VR users would ever hook up any USB input device, so this was probably an easy thing to kill.

There are a lot of positive things to say about the new Gear VR, but in essence it is really a low cost (but evolved) version of the Innovator versions.


Thanks for the feedback. I was so hopeful that I could maybe get it to work using something like what is shown in this video for the S6: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ftRlC-FijY

Maybe with a a more direct usb adapter like this: http://www.amazon.com/Leef-microSD-micr ... B00J2D7R20

Ah well.

TWhite
Explorer
Well that confirms it. Utter disappointment with this one. Literally exists to watch movies, nothing more for me. If it had positional tracking at least then it would open up some significantly better experiences that I could care for. I'll just have to wait for the Vive to show up and make feel like a year's actually passed since the release of the DK2, not a year has gone backwards to the DK1 like with the Gear VR.
CPU: i7 3770k 4.6Ghz GPU: EVGA GTX 780