On Sat, 2012-09-22 at 20:43 +0100, James Wilkinson wrote:
Incidentally, I understand that Android hasn’t removed support for USB mass storage: it’s just that many recent devices come without support for SD cards, so there’s nothing to export as USB mass storage. This means the Android device *and* the computer can both access the shared data at the same time, there aren’t any problems with jolts causing momentary disconnects of the SD card, and it gives the designers more freedom, especially with phones that have sealed-in batteries (so no battery cover to hide the SD card).
The Galaxy Nexus has a "virtual SD card", which is apparently why the phone doesn't present itself directly as a storage device over USB and forces the use of MTP for access.
(Note that it does have a removable battery though.)
poc