[MUSIC]
One of the biggest drawbacks of owning and an iOS device is that you can't expand its storage.
You can use cloud services like iCloud or even Dropbox but those require an internet connection and without one they're useless.
Today I'll show you an alternative way to add more storage to your iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch.
These devices here are media hubs.
And when you have one set up it connects to your IOS device with a direct wireless connection letting you stream anything you have.
Stored on the device, so if you're on a long flight, you can fit a number of movies and maybe even your entire music collection on this device and access it on your iPhone, even when you don't have an Internet connection.
When you're shopping around for a media hub, you'll notice that a lot of them seem to pretty much do the same thing, but keep an eye out for a few quirks.
For example, the RavPower FileHub and the IOGEAR MediaShair requiring an SD card that you purchase separately.
But the good news is that they tend to be a little cheaper.
They're also compatible with USB flash drives, and they'll power your iDevice while you stream your media.
The other type of device you'll see is one with onboard storage, like the Patriot Aero.
Which comes with one terabyte.
And finally, most of these guys can stream media to more than one device at the same time.
No matter which media hype you decide to go with setting them up pretty much works the same way.
So the [UNKNOWN] Power, insert the SD card, then connect it to your PC and fill it with any media you want to take with you.
For a long trip I'll add a few movies and my music collection.
At this point I'll turn on the FileHub by long pressing the power button.
The wireless icon lights up, and now I'll head back to the phone and connect to my FileHub through the WiFi settings menu.
Now I'll launch the companion app, and right under the device pane I should see all those files I just transferred.
To play media, I'll just double tap, and it'll start streaming.
Pretty quickly, too.
With the [UNKNOWN] power, I can even transfer photos and videos from my iPhone to the SD card.
Which can be useful if you're on a trip, and need to free up some space on your phone.
Hopefully, one day in future iterations of the iPhone, Apple will let us [UNKNOWN].
Expand storage using an sD card on the device.
But until then, it's not a bad solution.
If you have any questions or tips of your own, hit me up on Twitter, and check out cnet.com/how-to for more tips like this.
For cnet, I'm Sharon Profis.
