Comment by gf000
1 day ago
A 2-3 generation old pixel on the second hand marker is not expensive at all though.
And you easily add a mouse/keyboard just fine to it.
1 day ago
A 2-3 generation old pixel on the second hand marker is not expensive at all though.
And you easily add a mouse/keyboard just fine to it.
>A 2-3 generation old pixel on the second hand marker is not expensive at all though.
Sure but at around 300 bucks is still way over 50 bucks.
And even if you get a used Pixel 8, having separate phone and computer adds a priceless layer of redundancy and flexibility.
If someone steals my phone, I don't want to also loose my work PC with it.
You are also buying a soon to be unmaintained device which will fall out of security support.
That $50 PC can run linux with the latest kernel for the next 20 years (maybe longer).
There's lineageOS for outdated pixel device, but I think you loose device attestation if you flash that, so your banking, payment and digital-ID apps won't work anymore which is kind of important features for a lot of people.
I still think separating a phone for phone apps and a PC for productivity, is the best choice even if that PC is a 20 year old rustbucket from the dumpster, it will still do more tasks than a phone. You can't learn photoshop on a phone.
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I'm right there with relating to this mindset, however, I recently (in the past 2 weeks) got to experience restoring a new phone from backup without the old one present, and it's becoming essentially a non-issue. I can't think of a single thing that wasn't restored from cloud backup.
"work pc" -- random 50 dollar fire hazard running Linux. Anyway, those Android phones though they are obviously going to be the unreliable part in this story.
Isn't Pixel 10 the first one with fully supported desktop mode?
I remember I was very confused when buying a Pixel 7 to replace my (then 3 year old) Huawei P30 Pro, and the inferior camera + lack of desktop mode made it feel like a net downgrade.
I use it on my Pixel 8 Pro too It's a toggle in Developer options, Local Desktop.
According to Google's help site, no Pixel has a desktop mode (like you can find at Motorola, Samsung and others).
The latest Pixel models have DisplayPort, but their operating system only provides screen mirroring or app window mirroring on an external monitor. Unlike Pixel, the phones with a true desktop mode can display multiple windows on the monitor, and presumably they can have a selectable resolution for the monitor. I assume that for screen mirroring the monitor is used at the same resolution as the phone screen, i.e. either 1080 lines or only slightly more.
Moreover, while the help site states that DisplayPort exists in Pixel 8 and newer, Google does not bother to advertise the existence of this feature in its online shop, where there is no mention about this in the phone specifications.
> operating system only provides screen mirroring or app window mirroring on an external monitor
That's not true. It's probably written that way, because this is still an experimental feature so it is indeed not "supported", but it does work, you just have to toggle a few settings inside developer options.
And in this desktop mode it could make use of my 2k desktop screen, though it is quite buggy (it is a pixel 8 device, for reference)
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8 and up support secondary displays
Only pixel 8 and up have DP. So 2 generations old. I guess soon it will be 3rd gen.
Old pixels don't have HDMI output, I learned it the hard way when the screen of my Pixel 3a died.
Note that such capabilities were added to the 8 after it launched. When they launched it they did not even mention that it contains displayport alt mode.