Android Samsung MTP Interface Issues

[bweinel]

Anyone else here experienced interface issues with Samsung Galaxy phones using MTP and Kubuntu lately?

The last time I tried it (albeit about 4~5 months back,) it was working fine. I tried to download some pictures with it over the weekend and Kubuntu was unable to open files on the phone. It got the directory just fine... just got an error message when attempting to open a file. I checked the phone on a Windows system (just to see if it was an Android issue) and things worked fine there. I was able to access and download files.

I did some 'Googling' and found some comments in the Sourceforge MTP development echo regarding issues with libmtp and Samsung phones. However there were no real solutions beside trying the latest version.

I checked the udev/rules.d area, the device files are all still correct. mtpfs is still installed. No smoking guns were found anywhere on my system.

So as a 'Hail Mary', I tried downloading the latest libmtp-1.1.13.tar.gz source, compiled and installed it on my system... Still no cigar. I'm stumped for the moment.

cheers,
Bill

[GreyGeek]

Have a similar problem with IOS on my iPhone 6+. It worked fine several months ago, then a couple of IOS updates came down the pipe (9.3 --> 10.3) and now I can't access my photos on my iPhone via the USB cable. I have to email them to myself and open my Kmail and detach them.

[jlittle]

I went down this rabbit hole some years ago, and I suggest you stop now; that is, don't use the cable. MTP was invented by Microsoft and is inherently flaky.
If you have a wireless network that phone and computer connect to, it's far quicker and less problematic to get the phone to talk to the computer. KDE has KDE Connect, that works with an app in the Google play store (called KDE Connect). It might do everything you need, and once you set it up the phone pairs with KDE automatically when both are on the network. If it doesn't, an app called Airdroid will, I really like it, but some users have complained that the app maker's efforts to monetise the app are problematic. I use the old way to use it that doesn't involve their servers, by entering the local IP address of the phone, something like 192.168.1.101, into my browser. There's other apps too.
Samsung phones often take an SD card, and if your computer doesn't have a reader USB ones are cheap, mine cost $10, but make sure the reader supports the size of SD card you have. This approach is fiddly, but not much more so than the cable when it works.

HTH, John Little

[GreyGeek]

I tried KDE Connect.
It paired with my iPhone (Bluetooth). When I watch YT videos on my phone I can hear the sound in my headphones. When I use my stylus on my iPHone I can here the clicks in my headphones.
What I don't have is the iPhone KDE connect app that would allow me to duplux with my iPhone. There was a KDE Connect remote in the App Store three years ago but there none on the store now.
It seems that Android has the appropriate KDE Connect remote app and works great, but I don't have, and don't want, a Google account just to use their stuff.

[bweinel]

All,

Ok.. It looks like I have a solution. I corresponded with Marcus over in the libmtp developer echo on Sourceforge and found that apparently some versions of Android which are used on the Samsung Galaxy S series have a malformed 'devicestring' which causes this issue with libmtp. Marcus recommended that I upgrade to the latest version (1.1.13) as they have added some additional error checking to try to help with the issue. Unfortunately I was still having issues even after the upgrade. So today I got the 7.0 version of Android from my phone vendor which seems to have resolved the issue. Consequently this is very likely an Android issue and not really a libmtp issue.

cheers,
bill