The sad thing is that back when 3.0 (Honeycomb) shipped, most of the 10" or so Android tablets included a full size USB-A port. But then came 3.1, and the introduction of the above permission, and basically the major selling point of said port evaporated (i have a Toshiba Thrive sitting here that i basically shelved after said change).
If we observe Windows tablets, with the MS Surface at the forefront, many of them come with a easily accessible USB-A port (I recall Gigabyte tried to sell a tablet that came complete with a ethernet port even, but i think that series has since been discontinued).
What worries me is that Google introduced this change to placate big media. Because around the same time they made the big announcement that people could now buy movies and music via the Android Marketplace (later renamed Google Play).
It's not to placate big media, but to increase security, as others have pointed out.
But the bigger point is that I don't think it's just the USB port that limited Android's flexibility. Android was supposed to be a more flexible, more powerful iOS. That didn't play out in ways the average end user cares about.
What advantage does a A-port have over the current micro ports in a tablet? And now the new C port is slowly gaining more support, I bet the A-port will slowly vanish completely, or am I missing something here?
Counter-intuitively, those big fat USB-A sockets have a much lower minimum-cycle specification compared to Micro-B or USB-C ( 1500, 5000 and 10000 respectively ).
If we observe Windows tablets, with the MS Surface at the forefront, many of them come with a easily accessible USB-A port (I recall Gigabyte tried to sell a tablet that came complete with a ethernet port even, but i think that series has since been discontinued).
What worries me is that Google introduced this change to placate big media. Because around the same time they made the big announcement that people could now buy movies and music via the Android Marketplace (later renamed Google Play).