Since Android 14 AOSP, and in turn GrapheneOS, has this nice feature to use your phone as a webcam by connecting it to a PC via USB.
It does work, but on my Pixel 7 the front camera webcam feed quality is a bit subpar indoors, even when enabling the HQ feature in the webcam setup screen. This prompted me to try the back camera. Unfortunately, the quality of the webcam feed was somehow worse than the one from the front camera (more grainy, less details). Shouldn't the back camera quality be better than the front camera? What could be the reason for that?
If you have tested or used the webcam feature of your Pixel device either on GrapheneOS or on stock OS, I'd be glad if you could write about your experiences, especially about the quality.
I don't have a dedicated webcam for comparison, e.g. one of the better ones from Logitech, so I'm not sure how the quality would compare to that, if let's say even a Logitech Brio 500 would be a downgrade to the Pixel 7 when used as webcam.
Here's how to use the webcam feature:
- Have your device unlocked and plug your Pixel into a PC via USB cable
- From the dropdown notifications, there should be a USB connection setting (the one where you can also choose "only charging" or "file transfer")
- In this settings menu, choose the webcam option
- Your PC should now recognize that a webcam is plugged in
- You can change some webcam settings like zoom via the other notification on the phone which says something about webcam setup, just touch this notification and you'll see the webcam preview on your phone
- The HQ setting can be enabled in this preview as well, which will improve picture quality but will increase battery usage as well