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Your Pixel can now double up as a full Android PC with nothing more than a USB-C cable (www.androidauthority.com)
submitted 8 months ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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This has been hidden in developer options for a while now, but they're now releasing it officially. Limited to Pixel 8 and newer devices and no 4k yet.

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[–] 9 points 8 months ago (9 children)

Yeah, I have a pixel 7 and was disappointed on vacation to learn that its USB-C port can't do video when I wanted to plug it into a hotel room TV.

I don't get why this is a Pixel thing at all and not an Android thing though. Shouldn't any Android OS device that can do full video output over USB-C be able to do this?

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  • [–] 8 points 8 months ago (3 children)

    Video out is frustratingly uncommon. Samsung, some Sony's, and only very recently Pixels. Google was vocally against video out for a long time. And SD cards (gotta pay for drive). You were expected to roll the dice with whether Chromecast works with a random TV and wifi combination.

    Pixels were popular for two reasons: the camera and "basic black rectangle" device (RIP Nexus).

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  • [–] 3 points 8 months ago

    Yeah, Chromecast has been kind of a disaster for Google imho, in that it never got widespread adoption in TVs. If they'd pushed an open standard they might've been able to get that over the finish-line and get buy-in from 3rd parties. But instead every smart TV and smart phone has its own video streaming approach, it seems.

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  • [–] 1 point 8 months ago (1 child)

    I am confused.

    In developer options in basic android you can simply enable the feature right?

    My old Sony xperia 5 ii can do that and it definitely isn't a Sony feature...

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  • [–] 2 points 8 months ago

    There's hardware required to shunt the display out the USB port and since it's not a super in demand feature they usually don't implement it. As such the software for looking nice while doing it isn't as developed.

    But yes, it's been in developer settings for years, and was usable if your hardware supported it.

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