Do you need Root in order to use USB Host?

[McTricks]

I have a Droid 4. I found out recently that if you get a USB OTG cable, you can hook up a keyboard/mouse and use it with the phone. So, I bought one off of Amazon.

At this point all I had seen was someone using it on their phone. So, I plugged the cable in... and nothing. So, I googled it. And after an hour of googling later, I found a lot of guides for it, but they all required root.

So, do I need to root my phone to use a USB keyboard?

 

[mikedt]

I always thought USB host is a hardware implementation, in the device's chipset. Some devices have USB host, others do not.

Whether USB host can be turned on or off with software or rooting, I don't know. And would there be any need to enable/disable USB host with software?

I've got two 4.0 devices here, a phone and a tablet, plus I've got a USB OTG cable that came with the tablet. I can plug a USB mouse and keyboard into the tablet and they work fine, just like a little PC...LOL. But if I do the same with the phone, absolutely nothing happens whatsoever. AFAIK the phone just doesn't support USB host, end of.

 

[McTricks]

Thanks for the reply

I'm pretty sure that the Droid 4 has the hardware for USB host, I found several sources saying that they got it working.

But I just can't get it to work myself

I tried two different mice, and neither worked.

 

[Omar Days]

As someone told me on these forums, it's to do with the kernel apparently whether you have USB otg.

 

[McTricks]

So, if it isn't working, then I'd need to modify the kernel?

 

[ExtremeNerd]

NO. Don't modify anything. Root is NOT needed for USB OTG. I have a craplet from China which uses a keyboard easily. Try a different cable and keyboard before you do anything.