[HN Gopher] Android 14 adds support for using your smartphone as...
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Android 14 adds support for using your smartphone as a webcam
Author : amadeuspagel
Score : 52 points
Date : 2023-09-21 20:04 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.esper.io)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.esper.io)
| cassidyslivers wrote:
| About time I don't have to use 3rd party software often full of
| bloat to do this task.
| james2doyle wrote:
| I've been using the Camo app for over a year. Works excellent.
| Even supports viewing the camera over wifi. No cable necessary.
| It is free for a basic account. Find it here:
| https://reincubate.com/camo/
| mattbee wrote:
| I liked it too, paid for it for a few months. But every so
| often it would start lagging by about 1000ms. Tthe only
| solution was to reinstall the Windows drivers. This happened
| with both iPhone and Android devices, and more than once, so I
| cancelled when they didn't have a better solution.
| goodburb wrote:
| [deleted]
| saagarjha wrote:
| Most of them, except for one thread, seem on-topic.
| minroot wrote:
| When will Android phones get video output on their USB-C port?
| dazhbog wrote:
| My Oneplus 7T seems to have it but never found a use for it
| (its just basic screen mirroring). I think Samsung is the only
| one with a docking UI system (DEX) though
| ewoodrich wrote:
| I can plug my Galaxy S23 into a normal USB-C to HDMI or
| Displayport dock and use any external screen with Dex. Or do
| you mean something different?
|
| Edit: Just tried it on my dock and it can also mirror vs acting
| as a separate display via Dex.
| recursive wrote:
| I've been doing this for years. In what way is support not
| already present?
| mholt wrote:
| Too little, too late for me... I hate to be the guy having those
| "hot takes" or whatever, but hear me out for a sec:
|
| I didn't get a cell phone until 2013. (Yes I used land lines
| until then.) It was a Nexus 4 (still love the grippy sides and
| sleek glass back). Every 2-3 years I traded up, all the way until
| Pixel 6.
|
| Tomorrow my first iPhone will be delivered. Why? A lot of
| reasons, but some are:
|
| - I can't just plug my Google phone into an external display to
| mirror it. Uh, hello?? DisplayPort out is explicitly disabled in
| the source code with no reason given:
| https://twitter.com/MishaalRahman/status/1189998588023234560 --
| yet this works great in other phones.
|
| - I can't access my text messages from my Android phone (without
| a separate app like SMS Backup & Restore) -- go ahead, try it.
| Yeah, do an adb backup. Maybe rooting your phone would give you
| access, but it's impossible otherwise AFAIK. And I think rooting
| your phone deletes everything in the process.
|
| - I can't access my phone backup. It's ONLY stored on Google's
| servers. The only way to even get close is to restore it to a
| phone. This is a physical device I bought and literally am
| holding in my hand but can't access all the stuff on it! Did you
| know you can just plug in an iPhone into Windows or Macs and dump
| a backup to your computers? It's all right there, text messages,
| system settings, contacts, photos, databases, EVERYTHING (except
| maybe hardware-protected keys). It's amazing.
|
| - Do I even need to mention all the Google shenanigans? We all
| know what I'm talking about, right? The mess of messengers... the
| killing of various services, the lack of support, the stronger
| integration with ads and tracking.
|
| Apple's not perfect either, but I feel like it's worth a shot
| inside the walled garden for a bit. I like that some of these
| common sense things are not a problem with iOS:
|
| - Display out.
|
| - Accessing your own device.
|
| - Messaging that actually makes sense.
|
| - At least it feels like Apple cares about privacy;
| counterintuitively, I feel way more in control using Apple
| products than I do Google ones.
| colordrops wrote:
| Unlocking your phone wipes it. Rooting does not.
|
| I've used LineageOS + MicroG on a pixel phone and it's been
| great being free of Google spyware.
| njroute22 wrote:
| Why do you need to mirror your phone? Why do you want to access
| your messages? For what purpose? What do you need to backup
| besides (maybe) photos? Which is easy (drag and drop) anyway.
| Sounds more like you have some kind of device dependency beyond
| normality.
| hackmiester wrote:
| Displaying something on a TV is beyond normality?
| teawrecks wrote:
| I think when you say "why do you need to ____?" you think
| you're saying "what are you trying to do, and maybe there's
| another way to accomplish that", but what everyone hears is
| "you're right".
|
| And for the record, "because it's their device, not Google's"
| should be as good a reason as any.
| paulddraper wrote:
| > I can't access my phone backup. It's ONLY stored on Google's
| servers.
|
| What options do iPhones have for saving/restoring backups?
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _What options do iPhones have for saving /restoring
| backups?_
|
| iCloud and local.
| wlesieutre wrote:
| You can also do more granular backups with software like
| iMazing
|
| https://imazing.com/
| mplewis wrote:
| iPhone lets you manage backups from your computer. Learn
| more: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204136
| moonchrome wrote:
| I switch between both every few years, on iPhone 14 ATM.
|
| Honestly Android does a lot of things better - there's so many
| stupid "because Apple" things on iOS. For example it's
| impossible to tell the charging speed/estimated charge time, I
| have a lot of charging bricks between places and I can't tell
| if I picked an iPhone compatible fast charger/cable or not ? Or
| when I have Chrome/Firefox installed, highlight text and tap
| search the web - it takes me to Safari ? A lot of small
| annoyances like these where you can't do anything about it
| because the OS is so closed down.
|
| Android is way more customisable, easier to side load stuff
| (like running GBA emulator on iPhone). Also a lot more exciting
| phones in the Android ecosystem (eg. Samsung flip phones)
|
| I like the ecosystem integration with my Mac but I wouldn't say
| one is clearly better than the other.
| DavidPeiffer wrote:
| I've been using android phones since 2009 and am highly
| considering a switch to Apple for the next one.
|
| Along with the reasons you state, the ecosystem is really
| messy. I've bought Nexus/Pixel phones for the last 10 years and
| continue to be bummed by their performance.
|
| Pixel 1 XL was fantastic, but after about 2 years the camera
| kept failing. 3+ seconds to load, and it would commonly crash.
| Ultimately the battery life degraded, and the replacement
| battery degraded within a couple months, so I moved on.
|
| The 3a fell out of my pocket and broke 2 months prior to the
| end of security updates. That was a decent phone overall, but
| not supported by Google as long as I would have liked.
|
| Pixel 6 Pro has been fine so far, but my wife has been having
| issues with her Pixel 5. Slow performance, unreliable cellular
| connectivity, etc.
|
| "Don't buy Pixel phones" could be the lesson here, but
| alternatives are arguably more of a security nightmare. My
| experience with Galaxy phones has been that they're preloaded
| with an _incredible_ amount of junk that needs to be un-
| installed. With Pixel it 's exclusively Google apps, most of
| which can be removed. That gives a smaller privacy and security
| concern than having 30 different companies with their apps pre-
| loaded (and possibly not removable).
|
| > Apple's no angel either IMO, but I feel like it's worth a
| shot inside the walled garden for a bit.
|
| I've hated on Apple a lot over the years and am disappointed
| that switching platforms seems like the best move after all
| these years.
| ttt3ts wrote:
| Soon as I can sideload another browser with real AdBlock I am
| switching. Looks like the EU might force apple to allow it :)
| mardifoufs wrote:
| Yeah I have been using android for every single phone I've
| ever had, but I don't see the point once iOS allows
| sideloading. They have locked down the OS so much(I kind of
| understand why, but still) that the sideloading is pretty
| much the only difference now. So why go for android?
| KomoD wrote:
| > - I can't just plug my Google phone into an external display
| to mirror it. Uh, hello?? DisplayPort out is explicitly
| disabled in the source code with no reason given
|
| This apparently changes with the Pixel 8
|
| > - I can't access my text messages from my Android phone
| (without a separate app like SMS Backup & Restore) -- go ahead,
| try it. Yeah, do an adb backup. Maybe rooting your phone would
| give you access, but it's impossible otherwise AFAIK. And I
| think rooting your phone deletes everything in the process.
|
| > - I can't access my phone backup. It's ONLY stored on
| Google's servers. The only way to even get close is to restore
| it to a phone. This is a physical device I bought and literally
| am holding in my hand but can't access all the stuff on it! Did
| you know you can just plug in an iPhone into Windows or Macs
| and dump a backup to your computers? It's all right there, text
| messages, system settings, contacts, photos, databases,
| EVERYTHING (except maybe hardware-protected keys). It's
| amazing.
|
| This is not applicable for all Android phones
|
| > - Do I even need to mention all the Google shenanigans? We
| all know what I'm talking about, right? The mess of
| messengers... the killing of various services, the lack of
| support, the stronger integration with ads and tracking.
|
| No I don't, none of the dead services have impacted me, what
| mess of messengers? Lack of support for what?
| pests wrote:
| I don't have an opinion but..
|
| > what mess of messengers?
|
| Meet, Hangouts, GChat, Talk, Allo, Duo, Meet, Voice,
| Messenger ....
|
| With various levels of integration, merging, and unmerging of
| the servies over the years.
| teawrecks wrote:
| As someone who has been running de-googled android for years, I
| don't identify with any of your complaints.
|
| Good luck leaving that walled garden by going to apple.
| filereaper wrote:
| This is a welcome addition, companies spend time and effort
| building cameras with tracking and portrait mode etc..
|
| I just feel this feature comes a bit too late where there was a
| scramble during the pandemic to get webcams as everything
| suddenly went remote.
|
| Would have been good to have shipped this feature back then
| instead of buying 3rd party apps that provided this feature.
| xnx wrote:
| Exactly. I for sure would've thought this would be a "20% time"
| app as lockdowns became common. Wyze figured out how to allow
| its security cameras to be used as webcams in March 2020!
| https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/31/21202022/wyze-firmware-up...
| jsight wrote:
| Better late than never. I bought a webcam for those days, but
| I'm guessing my phone will still have far higher quality.
| orbital-decay wrote:
| Most Android phones don't have a good USB controller though, as
| it's not considered a priority. Without it you'll be restricted
| to the blocky MJPEG garbage with terribly downsampled chroma
| squeezed through the USB 2.0 connection, and get the quality
| equivalent to a laptop webcam.
| ClassyJacket wrote:
| 480mbps isn't enough for good quality video? It's 3.75x the
| maximum bitrate of a 4K Blu Ray. It should be fine. It can't be
| lossless, but it should be damn high quality.
| duskwuff wrote:
| > 480mbps isn't enough for good quality video? It's 3.75x the
| maximum bitrate of a 4K Blu Ray.
|
| Webcams need to be very near real-time to be useful. That
| severely limits what kinds of compression you can use on the
| video stream.
| ClassyJacket wrote:
| That's absolutely true but I still very much doubt it's so
| bad that you would exceed 480mbps even on a decent
| resolution stream. We're not talking multiple orders of
| magnitude difference. Like... if all else fails just send
| every frame as a separate image with a fast encoder and
| you've still got 1.6 megabytes for each.
|
| Steam in-home streaming needs to be realtime too, but is
| very playable, and most people aren't realistically getting
| 480mbps out of their wifi.
|
| 4k I don't know... 1080p no problem.
|
| Don't most phones have dedicated hardware video encoders on
| their SoC now anyway?
| GuB-42 wrote:
| To make a point, early webcams were USB 1.0, 12Mbps maximum,
| and it was enough for SD-quality video. USB 2.0 is 40x
| faster, which, assuming similar encoding (i.e. 20 year old
| tech), should be more than enough for 1080p video. It should
| be enough to best any laptop webcam, which are usually USB2
| internally, but with worse optics and without the processing
| power of a smartphone behind it.
|
| Using more fancy encoding, 4k should be no problem, even with
| a bit of headroom for on-device encoding and low latency.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| >without the processing power of a smartphone behind it.
|
| Considering the cheapest of desktop/laptop CPUs and iGPUs
| are more powerful than the best mobile CPUs and GPUs, this
| is a problem with the encoders and video chat software
| involved.
| Retric wrote:
| The best cellphone CPU's easily beat cheap laptops's from
| a few years ago.
| orbital-decay wrote:
| I was going to say something about MJPEG, but it looks like
| UVC supports H.264 for a decade already. I guess I was
| confused by the cheap USB 2.0 webcams, they mostly use MJPEG
| and yes it's utter trash.
|
| Still, good webcams use USB 3.0 and no chroma subsampling, to
| avoid recompression and enable certain tricks. I hope the YUV
| 4:4:4 mode will be supported in this, for those who have the
| speed and want chromakeys/non-blurry reds.
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(page generated 2023-09-21 23:00 UTC)