Android 14 adds support for using your smartphone as a webcam
Too little, too late for me... I hate to be the guy having those &quot;hot takes&quot; or whatever, but hear me out for a sec:<p>I didn&#x27;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.<p>Tomorrow my first iPhone will be delivered. Why? A lot of reasons, but some are:<p>- I can&#x27;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: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;MishaalRahman&#x2F;status&#x2F;1189998588023234560" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;MishaalRahman&#x2F;status&#x2F;1189998588023234560</a> -- yet this works great in other phones.<p>- I can&#x27;t access my text messages from my Android phone (without a separate app like SMS Backup &amp; Restore) -- go ahead, try it. Yeah, do an adb backup. Maybe rooting your phone would give you access, but it&#x27;s impossible otherwise AFAIK. And I think rooting your phone deletes everything in the process.<p>- I can&#x27;t access my phone backup. It&#x27;s ONLY stored on Google&#x27;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&#x27;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&#x27;s all right there, text messages, system settings, contacts, photos, databases, EVERYTHING (except maybe hardware-protected keys). It&#x27;s amazing.<p>- Do I even need to mention all the Google shenanigans? We all know what I&#x27;m talking about, right? The mess of messengers... the killing of various services, the lack of support, the stronger integration with ads and tracking.<p>Apple&#x27;s not perfect either, but I feel like it&#x27;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:<p>- Display out.<p>- Accessing your own device.<p>- Messaging that actually makes sense.<p>- At least it feels like Apple cares about privacy; counterintuitively, I feel way more in control using Apple products than I do Google ones.