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How to add extra storage to the Nexus 5X and Nexus 6P

Our guide to expanding the LG Nexus 5X and Huawei Nexus 6P‘s internal storage to carry around loads more movies, music, photos and other media.

Google’s new Nexus phones, the Nexus 5X and Nexus 6P, continued a worrying trend in 2015 – namely, a lack of expandable storage. There’s no microSD slot to quickly and conveniently add a memory card, which pushes a lot of people to spending extra cash for a model with more internal storage.

But if you only had enough cash for the most basic Nexus 5X or 6P, don’t fret. Here’s how to add extra memory.

Read next: Our quick-and-easy guide to freeing up wasted storage on the Nexus 5X and Nexus 6P.

Wirelessly transmit your media with a streaming device

If you’ve got a ton of HD movies that you want to take away on holiday, one idea might be a hard disk that offers wireless streaming to your Nexus 5X or 6P smartphone. The likes of Seagate and Sandisk manufacture drives that can connect to a Wi-Fi network and stream direct to a mobile phone, with the Seagate Wireless Plus rocking a mighty 1TB of space to carry hundreds of HD films around.

Carry your files in the cloud

Another alternative is to keep your media in the cloud, streaming to your phone over Wi-Fi or using your mobile data connection. You can buy and stream movies, music and more from the Google Play store, and we recommend keeping your documents in Drive, a free online service. Your Nexus phone comes with the Drive app pre-installed, so just sign in with your Google account and you’ll have full access to your files – and you can edit documents online by downloading Google’s Docs and Sheets apps.

You can also create your own cloud storage at home using a NAS drive. Check Amazon for affordable NAS solutions, which connect to your home WiFi and can be accessed from anywhere in the world providing you have an internet connection.

Add storage directly to the Nexus 5X or 6P via the USB port

By purchasing an external drive that you can attach to Android phones, you’ll be able to carry around a load of extra movies and other media, which you can access simply by plugging into your Nexus 5X or Nexus 6P’s USB port. You’ll need one that supports USB Type-C however, which is the spangly new reversible USB tech that the Nexus phones use. Old micro USB accessories are not compatible.

Type-C memory sticks and drives are tough to come by as the technology is still relatively new, but Sandisk has compatible drives that work with smartphones.

Read next: How to delete pointless files and free up storage on the Nexus 5X and 6P

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