Ever looked at one of those ubiquitous “thumb drives” that plug into USB ports and wish you could somehow jam it onto your iPad or iPhone to gain access to the additional storage? You can. One solid solution is the Olala 64GB iPhone Flash Drive, as I review…
Apple’s done a great job with Windows compatibility in the Mac OS X operating system, to the point where users don’t really think about the extraordinary interoperability behind the scenes in being able to plug in a Windows-formatted external hard drive or USB flash drive (“thumb drive”) and have it work flawlessly. The underlying problem of getting everything to just work correctly between systems is tricky, however, and when you add iOS into the mix, it’s a complicated world.
Still, a flash drive that lets you plug it directly into your Mac or Windows system and acts like just another hard drive, and also hooks onto an Apple iPad or iPhone via the Lightning connector and shows up there too? A tricky task, but one that a number of companies have accomplished, with varying levels of success. The other problem is that it needs to include software on the iOS side because neither your iPhone or iPad includes the concept of a folder, files or drives.
With its slick slider control and free-to-download iDisk app, Olala has both neatly covered with its flash drive line, including the quite reasonably priced 64GB unit I tested out. Here’s a pic, with the Lightning connector visible:
Move the slider to the other side and the Lightning connector recesses and a standard USB 2.0 connection appears, letting you easily slip the unit into a handy laptop or desktop system:
You can see it’s not much bigger than a standard flash drive, certainly still easily slipped into your pocket or purse!
The first time you put the unit into an iOS device, the system looks for its matching software app and failing to find it, pops up a prompt:
You want to install it, so tap on “App Store” to proceed.
I’ve previously downloaded iDisk me on other iOS devices, so I get the cloud icon with the down arrow, but the very first time, it’ll have a “get” button instead. Same basic idea, and a few seconds after you tap the install button, it’ll launch and let you interact directly with the Olala thumb drive:
Bright and cheerful, easy to understand. The iPhone 6s we used for this test is almost full, as the blue bar underneath its icon makes clear, while the iDisk thumb drive is almost empty.
To copy things onto the disk from the iPhone or iPad, tap on the device. Here are my videos:
Using standard iOS interface design, a tap on “Edit” lets me select as many videos as catch my eye, then select “copy to iDisk” to have them all then moved onto the flash drive.
A tap on “Back” lets me travel a different area in the app where I can check what’s on the flash drive itself:
A PNG image, a 110MB movie and a PDF file. Now, what happens if I flip the flash drive connector and plug it into my Mac system?
They there all are, ready to open, view, copy onto my Mac or even for me to drag and drop more files onto the unit for easy access on the iOS device.
Devices like the Olala 64GB iDisk iPhone flash drive mean that you can easily have a few dozen of your favorite movies or a few demo videos or photos from your portfolio instantly accessible without them actually residing on the iOS device itself. This can be great for security but it can also save you needing to buy the bigger storage capacity iPads and iPhones too, something that can save hundreds of dollars at your next upgrade. And it’s shareable too, which is handy if the kids also want to watch one of those movies on their own iPad!
The Olala 64GB iPhone flash drive with Lightning connector is a keeper, a handy flash drive that just happens to also be completely compatible with all of my iOS devices. And that’s a winner in my book.
Olala 64GB iPhone Flash Drive: $42.99 at Amazon.com (available in various capacities too)
Disclosure: Olala sent us this flash drive for the purposes of this review.
I have an Olala flash drive, but the iDisk Me is not supported on the current 14.7.1 software on my iPhone 7 Plus. I can’t find alternative software to interface with the flash drive. Even formatted it to suit Sandisc app. Do you know any way to make this store from IPhone to Olala flash drive? Or is it now just an expensive flash drive?
Congrats OLALA for a job well done. I’m sure your flash drives will delivers as twice as speed as a regular USB 3.1 flash drive