Editing Smartphone (section)

====File transfer====
Originally, [[mass storage]] access was commonly enabled to computers through USB. Over time, mass storage access was removed, leaving the [[Media Transfer Protocol]] as protocol for USB file transfer, due to its non-exclusive access ability where the computer is able to access the storage without it being locked away from the mobile phone's software for the duration of the connection, and no necessity for common [[file system]] support, as communication is done through an [[abstraction layer]].

However, unlike mass storage, Media Transfer Protocol lacks parallelism, meaning that only a single transfer can run at a time, for which other transfer requests need to wait to finish. This, for example, denies browsing photos and playing back videos from the device during an active file transfer. Some programs and devices lack support for MTP. In addition, the direct access and [[random access]] of files through MTP is not supported. Any file is wholly downloaded from the device before opened.<ref>{{cite web |title=What Happened To Mass Storage & File Management? [Updated] - Mobility Arena - Mobile Phone, Smartphone, Cell Phone Reviews |url=https://mobilityarena.com/what-happened-to-mass-storage-and-file-management/ |website=mobilityarena.com |date=2011-11-18}}</ref>