Many users, when asked if they have a webcam, will answer yes, the one built into their computer, be it a laptop, a convertible or two-in-one, or an all-in-one desktop. Many others will answer no, because when they want to have a video conference they turn to their smartphone. This was more pronounced until 2020, when the pandemic was the great catalyst for video conferencing, but even so, today, there are many users who do not have a webcam.
This is understandable, because to make very specific use of it, the investment may not be worth it. The problem, however, arises when we need it and when we go to use the one incorporated in our devices we discover, to our horror, that its quality is comparable to that of the cameras of the first mobiles that began to incorporate cameras. Yes, those that hit the market in the middle of the first decade of this century.
In this regard, I can tell, as a related anecdote, that a few years ago I decided to use the webcam built into my laptop for the first time to hold a work meeting over the Internet. I connected to the meeting place at the indicated time and there you can see my interlocutors. But they could not say the same about me, since despite the fact that my environment had “decent” lighting, they could only see a handful of dark, truly spooky-looking pixels that gave rise to some jokes, once the scare had passed. Finally I had to connect to the meeting from the mobile and, yes, the front camera of the same was up to the task and the meeting took place normally.
Android is adding a new “DeviceAsWebcam” service that “turns an android device into a
webcam.” Specifically, Android devices that support the standard UVC (USB video class) gadget mode will be able to send video data that hosts can read from /dev/video* nodes. pic.twitter.com/oOgIqr1KkE— Mishaal Rahman (@MishaalRahman) February 2, 2023
Something makes me think that some Google engineer must have gone through a similar situation at some point because, according to has revealed on Twitter Mishaal Rahman, a popular Android analyst, Google is preparing a function so that we can use any Android smartphone as a webcam on the PC. Rahman came to this conclusion after finding data indicating that Android is pushing a feature called “DeviceAsWebcam” to the Android Open Source Project (AOSP) repository.
According to their findings, the key to this new function lies in its ease of use, since it will only be necessary to connect the smartphone to the PC through a USB port for the operating system to identify the device as a webcam, without the need to install drivers or additional software.
