Android File Transfer
Version: GIT Web: http://bit.ly/android-file-transfer
Most modern smart phones are equipped with decent cameras, which is the reason of the shrinking market of standalone compact cameras. Even if many of us upload our smartphone-taken shots to various cloud storage services, there’s still a need to download images to a computer, from time to time.
Android-based phones no longer use the classic USB mass storage connection type in favour of MTP (media transfer protocol), and while the latter is supported in all major Linux desktops, there are still stability problems with MTP in Linux (at least in Dolphin). We were looking at ways to transfer the DCIM directory from an Android device to our Linux box until we came across AndroidFileTransfer. This is a great standalone GUI tool that solves all the problems related to MTP support in Linux.
AndroidFileTransfer will only launch if you’ve already connected your phone with your Linux computer via USB cable. If not, you’ll only see a warning notification that the program couldn’t find any MTP device.
The main window of the tool is quite simple, and perhaps for some people it’s too simple for a file manager. Bear in mind, then, that AndroidFileTransfer is only a file copying tool rather than a fully featured a file manager. It enables you to browse your device’s file structure and select which content you wish to download. You can also upload some files onto your phone, or delete existing files and directories there. So, in many regards AndroidFile Transfer mimics the feature set of Rapid
PhotoDownloader with some important differences. There’s no preview thumbnails for images and videos, but you are able to manipulate files on your smartphone.
From our perspective, the main advantage of AndroidFileTransfer is its very reliable support for MTP. It may sound obvious, but in real life things like GMTP, GVFS and MTFS are not bugfree, so that you can experience random freezes or corrupted files. Using AndroidFileTransfer solves the problem gracefully!
“It solves all the problems related to MTP support in Linux”