If you haven’t tried adding photos or your favorite songs to your new T-Mobile G1 yet, you’re in for a surprise. I tried multiple times to connect my G1 to my Mac via bluetooth or USB cable without any success. I even tried connecting to my virtual machine (Windows XP) running off of Parallels but that didn’t work either. Fortunately after a few attempts I was able to make it work using a USB connection.  It totally makes sense once you’ve done it but its not at all intuitively designed.

This is what you need to do:

  1. Connect your G1 to your computer using a USB cable
  2. Watch the top of the screen on your G1 for a USB symbol to appear in the upper left hand corner
  3. Tap the symbol and drag down the notification window just like you do when you get new notifications (i.e. texts, emails, etc.)
  4. Tap on the notification that says “USB connected”
  5. Select ‘Mount’

USB Icon on T-Mobile G1

USB Connected To G1

Mount T-Mobile G1

You can now use your G1 as an external drive and move files between your computer and your phone’s SD card.  If you’re using Windows just go to My Computer and open the new Removable Disk (e.g. E or F).  On the other hand if you’re using a Mac, the drive will appear on your desktop as “NO NAME”.  Here you can create new folders (i.e. Music, Videos, Documents, etc.) to hold your songs, movies, photos, or documents. When you’re ready to move files between your computer and G1, just select and copy and paste them into the designated folder on your G1’s MicroSD card.

To remove your G1 in Windows, right click on the removable disk icon on the taskbar and select ‘Safely Remove Hardware’.  A window will pop up with USB Mass Storage Device will appear and you just need to click on ‘Stop’.  Then select ‘HTC Android Phone USB Device’ and click ‘OK’.  You can now safely unplug your G1 and enjoy all your imported songs.  To remove your G1 from a Mac, simply drag the ‘NO NAME’ drive on your desktop to the trash where an eject icon will appear and dismount it.

Disconnect G1


Disconnecting G1 Safely


No Name External Drive On Mac

I know it all sounds like a lot to do, but it’s really simple after you do it for the first time.  I also made it sound more complicated than it is by adding all the details.  However, I’ve found that it’s always better to have more than enough detail rather than not enough when you’re creating a how-to article or providing instructions for something.

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