Android analyst Mishaal Rahman has revealed on Twitter that Google and its developers plan to turn Android phones into a Plug and Play Webcam. The webcams of many laptops are not good enough—a reason why many have recently converted their smartphones into webcams.
However, third-party software must be installed on the laptop to use a smartphone as a webcam. Android analyst Mishaal Rahman just revealed that Google plans to make it easier for Android users by creating a feature named "webcam for Android."
"Using an Android phone as a webcam became popular during the pandemic, but you've typically had to install a third-party app. You may not have to do this in the future, as Google is adding support for turning Android devices into USB webcams!" Mishaal Rahman said on Twitter.
Rahman said he discovered this new information in the Android Open Source Project (AOSP) repository. AOSP is Google's open-source operating system development project to maintain stock Androids. With an AOSP, third-party developers can make contributions that will help improve Android under the supervision of Google.
While analyzing the new feature which Google is about to integrate into Android devices, Android analyst Mishaal Rahman said that this new Google webcam feature would work on devices that support the standard UVC mode.
"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. The system property 'ro.usb.uvc.enabled' will be used to toggle UVC gadget functionality on Android devices. It's only readable by system apps, and specifically, the Settings app and USB gadget HAL will read it," Mishaal Rahman said.
Turning one's phone into a Webcam while using a personal computer is not something new, but the feature the Google webcams brings is something that is not yet seen. This new feature will prevent many from downloading third-party software before they can use their Android devices as webcams.
More Settings to be Tweaked
As part of his revelation, Rahman also mentioned that certain settings on Android devices had to be tweaked before they would be compatible with the upcoming Google webcam feature. Rahman said that before an android device gets this webcam for Android, the kernel needs to be updated to the new setting to feature. However, it has not been revealed when Google will launch the expected update on Android devices.
"Android has supported external plug-and-play USB webcams for a while now, but support for using your phone as a UVC gadget is new, though there are plenty of third-party apps that accomplish similar functionality. Your Android device's kernel may need to be compiled with CONFIG_USB_CONFIGFS_F_UVC=y for this new functionality to work. This is the case on GKI kernels since android12-5.10," Rahman explained further.