Comment by Rinzler89

>Pixel 6 Pro I got after that, I was distraught to learn that Pixels didn't support video-out at all

Since Google switched from Qualcomm to Samsung SoCs starting from the Pixel 6, they lost a lot of performance and cool features compared to previous Qualcom driven Pixels.

As much as I hate Qualcomm for being an evil foss hating patent troll, their SoCs were a cut above the competition on all fronts, and phones with their SoCs performed and aged better. Hence why phones with their SoCs were more sought after than the same models with Samsung SoCs.

Shame Google had to ditch them. I heard starting from pixel 10 they'll roll out their own SoCs based on their own design fabbed at TSMC.

When my Pixel 6 Pro screen died, I could still hear the haptic feedback from button presses. So I plugged in a USB C to HDMI adapter, and I couldn't believe I couldn't see it on the screen! I needed to get access to my Google Authenticator (I had not saved the backup codes). That resulted in months of recovering accounts by taking my picture holding up handwritten signs and my ID. Of course I should have saved the backup codes, but it would have been really nice to have an alternate way to see my screen when my phone was otherwise still working.

>Google is petty sometimes.

Google has no idea how to develop and support a product, period. If that product or feature isn't bringing in billions in ad revenue, then it doesn't matter to them.

  Exhibit A: Pixel getting shittier by the year
  Exhibit B: Android wearables
  Exhibit C: Android tablets
  Exhibit D: Nest thermostats
  Exhibit E: Google Home products not being able to properly work with each other despite being on the same WLAN and made by the same company
  Exhibit F,G,H,I,J,K,ELEMENOPE

The weirdest one to me is the introduction of the IR temperature sensor on the Pixel 8 Pro, without the possibility to read skin temperature, which was added months later, this year. Just WHY?! It would have been cool to have during peak Covid infectious season, but not 2-4 years after, when nobody* gives a shit anymore about Covid.

I swear, product dev at Google is being run by one of those wind-up circus monkey toys playing the cymbals that Homer Simpson has in his head[1], and all engineers at Google just roll with it without question while Sundar is busy pumping the stock talking about AI. I'm waiting for them to introduces a Pixel with a temperature probe you'll have to stick up your *ss and it reads what you had for lunch and recommends you new restaurants on Google Maps.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rC7Y04k5Tbo

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You can do way more than that. Android can run web servers on-device; I can code and edit my PHP website on an Apache/Nginx/Lighttpd local server, and push changes to production server. All without opening Termux.

If you have Termux, you can do even more, like run a VM for a sandbox dev environment. No cloud required.

Android in desktop mode is far more useful and less locked down than Chromebook. As usual, Samsung has led the way in making yet another Android feature viable, as Google tries to catch up 7 years later.

Windows Phone has this feature long time ago and I got to experience it at conference they had. Yea, if your daily workflow is Email/Word Processing/Basic Spreadsheets, it could mostly do what you need it to do but was touch laggy due to hardware. At this point, with most Pro devices, it could 100% be your daily driver. Seems all that is missing is software support. I wish iPhone would do it but Apple clearly doesn't want to cut into iPad/Mac sales.

>If all you're doing is normal word processing / browser things, this basically sounds like a good enough daily driver.

On 2019 era phones probably not, but on recent flagships with >8GB of RAM and latest Qualcomm SoCs, and UI desktop enhancements like Samsung's DEX, definitely. Except nobody knows about it.