Several programs to turn your iPhone into a thumbdrive.

UX Interaction Design October 27th, 2009

The following is a quick review of several iPhone apps and/or desktop software that use the extra space on your iPhone as a thumbdrive.

My task – to transfer a large amount of data from one work Mac to a PC at home.  FTP was out of the question as that would have taken days.  And instead of lugging the laptop back and forth, I thought I’d look into using the 10GB of free space on my iPhone.

Airsharing

(free iPhone app)
http://avatron.com/apps/
No install on any of your computers, it turns your iPhone into a file server where you can wirelessly access it from any browser or network share.  Easy to use, easy to setup.  Nice interface.  Airsharing has the ability to disable sleep mode, which otherwise might kill your transfer, so that’s a plus.  I found this great for small files or occasional usage, but unsuitable for transferring gigabytes.  I tried to copy a few massive files and it took for-freaking-ever.  Also, I had many failed transfers with the larger files.  Airsharing must also be running the entire time, so no switching apps while your transfers are running.  The pro version can send files to a printer, email files, and unzip archives too.

But still I had so many problems with the free version, I looked into the following other options.

FileAid v1.3

(free iPhone app)
http://www.digidna.net/fileaid/
Like Airsharing, it creates a wireless file server on your iPhone.  It also allows you to preview or play many file types, including PDFs, zip files, and spreadsheets.  See the full list.  One huge bonus is that it uses the same file structure as their other product DiskAid, so they work well together.

DiskAid

(Mac and PC versions, free 15 day trial, $9.90 for a license)
http://www.digidna.net/diskaid/
PC and Mac software, PC requires installation, Mac, the usual drag to applications.
Diskaid allows direct USB connection to the iPhone, making transfers MUCH faster and more reliable.  The interface could use some work, but it is functional.  And for $10, you can’t go wrong if you use this regularly.  Of course, you could also try the free FileAid until you feel you really need the faster connection.  With these desktop installs, there is nothing to install anything on the iPhone, so it theoretically could work across many different phones in the same manner (I did not test this).

One desired feature is to be able to select more than one file within a folder without selecting all files (the folder itself).  The user interface could definitely use some work, but it does the job nicely.  In the end, this was the best choice for my purposes.

While I was at it, I also tried the others I had downloaded…

iPhoneExplorer v116

(free Mac and PC versions)
http://www.iphone-explorer.com/
This program allows you to look at your phone’s file structure.  That seemed to be about it, although maybe I was missing something.  I could not  find a way to transfer files or even find the files inside of Airsharing or DiskAid.  It very well could be possible, but it wasn’t obvious to me.  That said, the UI could be more helpful.

i-FunBox

(free PC version)
http://www.i-funbox.com/
PC only, so it didn’t make the cut.  It seems to be a USB file browser, allowing access to all system files, and also provides the ability to transfer files to and fro.  UI-wise, this looks a little more rough around the edges.

One Response to “Several programs to turn your iPhone into a thumbdrive.”

  1. Dave Howell Says:
    October 27th, 2009 at 11:58 pm

    Stay tuned… the next version (2.1) of Air Sharing Pro will let you use a free Mac or Windows app, like iPhone Explorer, to transfer files over USB into a folder that is readable by Air Sharing Pro. Version 2.1 should be available in just a couple of weeks, App-Store-Review-Gods willing.

    Also, Air Sharing version 2.1 will use an in-app purchase to upgrade to the full Pro functionality for just $4.99.

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