There are many different ways to connect
to these numerous mobile devices that we use.
And there are also many different ways
to use our mobile devices to then connect to the internet.
In this video, we'll look at many of these mobile device
connections.
One common way to connect our computer
to these mobile devices is through a Micro-USB
or a mini-USB plug.
These are very standardized especially since the European
Union's standardized that all of the mobile devices in the EU
must be able to support this Micro-B plug type connection.
If you have an older mobile device,
you may find a mini-B plug.
You can see, the mini-B plug is a little bit larger
than the Micro-B plug.
You'll also find that newer mobile devices
are using USB-C, which is a 24-pin USB connector.
And it's double sided, which means it doesn't matter
which side you plug it in.
It'll work just fine.
It's about the same size as the older USB Micro-B plug.
And you can see them next to each other on the screen here.
On the other end of the USB connection
is probably a standard USB A connection,
just like you always use to connect to your computer.
And the USB plug can act as both a USB 2.0 connection
or the newer USB 3.1 standard.
One nice addition to the USB-C standard
is that it can also act as an analog audio output.
So there are very inexpensive adapters
you can get that will convert from a USB-C connector
to a standard analog audio jack.
Many Apple mobile devices use a proprietary standard connection
called a lightning connector.
This is an eight-pin connector.
And you'd commonly see this on iPhones and iPads.
There are some advantages to using this lightning connector
over a Micro-USB connector.
One of those is you can output more power through a lightning
connector, which means you could possibly recharge
your iPhone or your iPad faster than using
a traditional Micro-USB connection.
These can also be plugged in either way
to your mobile device.
There's no top or bottom.
So it doesn't matter which side you're plugging it in.
It will connect every time.
This is also a much simpler design
than the older Apple 30-pin connectors
that they used to use.
And they're much more durable than those connectors, as well.
Many of our mobile devices allow us
to use tethering to get internet access.
We would connect our mobile phone directly to our computer
usually over a USB connection.
And that would allow us to use the phone as a method
to communicate to the internet.
So this computer, being directly tied to this phone,
would then have the same access to the internet
as your phone normally has.
This means, if your laptop is not connected to an 802.11
wireless network or it's not connected
to a cellular network using a built-in adapter,
you can simply use a USB cable and your telephone
to get the access over these cellular networks.
Many phones allow you to take this idea of tethering
to the next level and turn your phone
into an to 802.11 wireless hotspot.
This means that any 802.11 device
can connect to your phone.
And your phone then provides internet access
over the cellular frequencies.
Both tethering and this wireless hotspot
functionality is often controlled
by your wireless carrier.
So check with your wireless company
to see what type of functionality
is available on your phone and if there
are any costs involved for enabling these capabilities.
In the early days of mobile phones,
we had many different cables and connectors that we were using.
It seemed that every phone that we used
had a different type of connection to be able
to power that device.
And it was usually a different type of cable
if you wanted to connect to that same device and transfer data.
Every phone manufacturer had a different way of doing this.
And it seemed that they were also
changing these connections intentionally
with every different model of phone.
The European Union and the market
really drove a lot of changes along these lines.
And the EU insisted that, if you were
going to connect a mobile phone to an external power
connection, it must have a standard connector.
And the EU standardized on the USB-type connections
for every phone that was sold in the EU.
This solved a number of problems for consumers
that were having to collect a lot of different cable
connections or connect to a lot of different cables
to be able to charge their phones.
On this single charging system that's on the screen,
you'll notice there are multiple cables for Nokia, Nokia, Nokia,
and Nokia.
Those are four different power types for the different phones
made by the same manufacturer.
By converting our mobile devices to use one or two
different standards for power, we greatly
simplified this process for the consumer.
Another type of mobile device connectivity that you
might use every day is NFC.
Stands for Near Field Communication.
This allows you to use your mobile device
to transfer small bits of data to other devices.
These might be payment systems like the one you see here.
You might be using your phone for transportation.
So it can be used as a bus token or a subway token.
Or you might want exchange contact information
with someone else who might have an NFC-enabled phone.
This allows your phone to act as an access token,
or a way to identify yourself, or a credit card.
And it also has built into the standard a way
to encrypt all of this communication
so that all of that data is transferred safely.
For higher speed and more persistent
connections from our mobile devices,
we might use a Bluetooth connection.
We sometimes refer to Bluetooth as a PAN or a Personal Area
Network.
Bluetooth is used for many different mobile device
connections.
We might use Bluetooth to tether our smartphone
so that we can use it as a mobile access point.
We might want to use our headphones or headsets
over this wireless Bluetooth connection.
Or we might want to connect health monitors or speakers so
that we're able to communicate and send data to these devices
without any wires connecting to our mobile device.
On many mobile devices, especially Android devices,
you may find that you have IR connectivity.
This stands for Infrared.
And although we used to use infrared
for some limited printing or file transfer functionality,
802.11 has effectively replaced that.
Where you'll instead find IR being used
is in entertainment centers.
So you can sit on your couch with your infrared-enabled
mobile device and control your volume or the channel that's
playing on your television.