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New in Windows 10: USB Dual Role on Mobile

This post has been republished via RSS; it originally appeared at: Microsoft USB Blog articles.

First published on MSDN on May 11, 2015

Authored by Andrea Keating [MSFT]

Have you ever wanted to watch the video that was sitting on your flash drive when all you have is your phone? What about editing a Microsoft Word document from your phone with the comforts of a “real” keyboard and mouse? Are you a developer who wants to make USB accessories that work with both Windows Mobile and Desktop devices? Well, in Windows 10 now you can…

In Windows 10, Microsoft is introducing support for USB Dual Role. USB Dual Role refers to the ability of a system to behave as a USB Device or a USB Host. This is a really exciting feature as it adds the ability to use your USB devices with your Mobile phone for the first time ever in Windows!

Please note, this feature will only be available on new Windows 10 devices that support USB Dual Role. This is because of the hardware changes required for the USB port to support device enumeration. While there are devices in the market today that have USB Dual Role capable controllers, the platforms were not designed to support USB Dual Role. New hardware may advertise that they are Dual Role capable.

To support these new devices on the Windows 10 Mobile OS, we are including the following class drivers. These class drivers have been selected for inclusion in Windows 10 for Mobile due to (a) their popularity and (b) key Windows 10 scenarios we are enabling.

USB Host class drivers supported on Windows 10 for phones

Examples of Devices Covered by these drivers

USB Hubs (USBHUB)

USB Hubs

HID (HidClass, KBDCLass, MouClass, KBDHid, MouHid)

Keyboard, mouse

USB Mass Storage (Bulk & UASP)

Flash Drive

USB Audio in / out (USBAUDIO)

Speakers

Serial Devices (USBSER)

Arduino

Bluetooth (BTHUSB)

Bluetooth dongle

Generic USB Host Driver (WinUSB)

Scientific Data Acquisition

The Windows team will continue to monitor the top devices that are plugged into a Windows 10 Mobile system. With this data in hand, we will be in a position to know which additional drivers should be considered for inclusion in future release of Windows. Leveraging WinUSB and our WinRT APIs, a developer can create a custom device that works with a custom app on the Windows Mobile OS.

For more details:

· The Enabling New USB Connectivity Scenarios WinHEC presentation here: https://channel9.msdn.com/Events/WinHEC/2015/WHT200

· The Building New Apps for USB Accessories //BUILD presentation here: https://channel9.msdn.com/events/Build/2015/3-81

· Developer documentation is also available on MSDN here: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/hardware/dn957036(v=vs.85).aspx

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