Blue makes a prosumer mic that you can connect directly to an iPod or iPhone via the dock port. I would love to have the same capability to do something similar for an Android phone or tablet. This would be really useful for field recording. I know that some tablets have support for various USB accessories to be plugged in, but I don't know if the OS can handle a microphone. Is this possible using existing or near future (Ice Cream Sandwich) hardware/OS combinations?
Answer
The range of USB device types supported "as is" by Android is limited and does not include microphones.
On the other hand, Android has the capability to work with an unlimited range of USB devices via their 'open accessories' sdk/kit/framework. This was added in Android 3.0.
I believe they had to do it this way: existing USB devices require driver support and they can't go adding all those drivers to Android (which is a static image). The open accessory framework will allow for devices that can be supported without loading a Linux driver.
So, you can't just go and buy a USB microphone and plug it into your Android device, but I expect we will soon start seeing USB accessories that are specifically designed to work with Android.
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