Nov 4, 2014 -- It is now possible to use an android tablet or smart phone as a high speed serial terminal.  The part number of this cable which is used to adapt from the Android Micro-AB connector is PDCA-M9-6.  This is a six inch cable which plugs into the small USB connector on the Android tablet or phone and which has a 9 pin serial port connector on the other end.  This serial port connector is the same as the serial port which can be found on PC's.  Most serial equipment has an available adapter which adapts the RS232 serial port to a 9 pin Dsub connector in the PC configuration.

By using the PDCA-M9-6 cable, you can run a terminal program on the Android.  There are quite a number of free ones available on the Google Play store.  The name of the IC in the PDCA-M9-6 cable is a FTDI chip.  The FTDI company offers free terminals on their website.  Their terminal runs at 115kbps and can be used to send and receive text files at full speed.

Many people would like to have a full speed serial terminal and would like to avoid carrying around a laptop or notebook.  Now, it is possible to use Android devices such as Google Nexus 7 and Samsung Note 3 as a full speed serial terminal to send and receive text files.