May 6, 2022

Pixel 6 camera

First, a quick rant. I hear a lot about lenses and sensors and such. What I want is a phone/camera that makes it simple and easy to transfer my photos to my computer. Ideally I would like to grab my phone, and a USB cable, and import photos straight into Lightroom. Up to now this has always been a world of hell and frustration with every phone I have laid hands on. If the phone makers want us to view the phone camera as more than a toy to dork around with on social media they need to address this issue. Bouncing photos through some cloud service is simply unacceptable.

USB cables

I tried a USB-C to USB-C cable on my linux machine. Nothing whatsoever showed up as a USB device (but it does charge the phone just fine).

Next I try a USB-A to usb-c cable and I see activity in the logs: 

May  6 11:03:44 trona kernel: usb 4-2: new SuperSpeed USB device number 2 using xhci_hcd
May  6 11:03:44 trona kernel: usb 4-2: New USB device found, idVendor=18d1, idProduct=4ee1, bcdDevice= 5.10
May  6 11:03:44 trona kernel: usb 4-2: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3
May  6 11:03:44 trona kernel: usb 4-2: Product: Pixel 6
May  6 11:03:44 trona kernel: usb 4-2: Manufacturer: Google
May  6 11:03:44 trona kernel: usb 4-2: SerialNumber: ----
This is encouraging (but why did the USB C to C cable not work?). I can type the following commands. The first works, the second simply gets errors: 
simple-mtpfs -l
1: Google IncNexus/Pixel (MTP)
simple-mtpfs /home/tom/Phone/mtp
Now, on my phone, I go to "Settings", "Connected Devices", "USB". It tells me "charging this device", but offers some options below. I turn on "File transfer / Android Auto". This yields no benefit, I still get errors trying to mount using simple-mtfs (this used to work for my ancient Samsung phone). The logs show a USB disconnect (this is not good), and an unplug and replug don't trigger a reenumeration.

After some fiddling I learn two things. One is that replugging at the computer end does nothing. But if I plug/replug at the phone end, it reenumerates. And I try it again and get lucky. I select "file transfer" and it sticks and simple-mtfs mounts the phone. But I don't see any photos under the DCIM directory. There are some ancient images under "Pictures", but these don't look like what I am after (they are dated 2019 and are probably rubbish copied over from my old Samsung phone).

I give up on doing this from my linux machine, and take the phone and the same cable to my Windows 10 machine. Nothing at all happens. I don't even get the "charging this device" message, although that could be because the battery is at 100 percent.

I wait a while, then replug the phone end of the USB-C cable. I feel the phone vibrate and windows brings up a "new device detected" dialog asking me what to do. It offers to import using an ancient version of Adobe Bridge, but this is not what I want. No option to import via Lightroom sadly. I choose "no action" and try launching Lightroom and check the lightroom import. No sign of my phone there.

The above Reddit thread recommends enabling USB debugging under developer options. To do this, bring up Settings. Go to "About phone". Tap the build number 7 times. You are now a developer. Go to Settings again, and then to "system". Developer options will be there now. Go into developer options and turn on USB debugging.

Linux sees the phone now, but declares it is not an MTP device. I turn developer options off, replug the phone and notice that a Pixel 6 icon appears on my desktop. I didn't see that before. However, when I click on it, I see: 

mtp://Google_Pixel_6_230......47G/
But the contents are entirely empty.

Conclusions

This is why people don't take phone cameras seriously. They are fine if you want to post images on Instagram, but for someone like me, who spent time yesterday taking images I hoped to post on a web page, they are nothing but silly toys.
Have any comments? Questions? Drop me a line!

Tom's Cell Phones / tom@mmto.org