Setup & Usage
Before you can start using the DataTraveler Bolt Duo with your iPhone you’ll need to download the Kingston Bolt app, which is easily found in the App Store. Opening the app it will prompt you to plug in your Bolt Duo drive.
One you plug in your drive the App will read it and you are give a few different options. It will also show you how much space you have available on both your iPhone and the Bolt Duo drive.
So first we can select transfer. In this section we are given the option to transfer All, all photos, all videos, all favorites, or select. While the first four options are bulk transfers the select option allows you to choose which files you want to move over. Once you have made your choice the app will prompt you if you want to keep these files on your iPhone, then it will start transferring files over to the Bolt Duo.
You can also take photos / videos directly from the app that will then go right to the Bolt Duo drive. While this is convenient, you do not get full control like you do on the native iPhone camera app and the picture quality is not as good (think SnapChat camera). Doing some investigating in the settings it seems we can only record video at 720p 30, 1080p 30, and 4K 18, whereas on the native iPhone camera we have a lot more modes. In the settings menu you can easily format the drive as well.
One small issue I did encounter with the App is when I would transfer photos off of my iPhone (.HEIC) to the Bolt Duo, when I would go to view them (on the Bolt Duo) from the app they just appeared as blank photos. I found this weird as I could view these same photos within the app when I went to select them to move over to the Bolt Duo. Hopefully this is something they can fix with a future update.
I also connected the Bolt Duo to my computer and did a simple speed test using CrystalDiskMark. Here are the results.
