Android 14 offers a lightly customizable lock screen and not much else.
What about the fact that you can use your phone’s camera as a webcam for your PC without any sketchy apps installed
Did this feature actually release? I thought it was coming in a future update.
Not released yet. It’s supposed to be in the next Quarterly Platform Release. (QPR1)
How do you use this? Does the phone need to be wired in, or is there some wifi solution?
without any sketchy apps installed
How do you do it without an app?
It’s in beta right now, to be released in a month or so.
It supports wifi and usb, that’s what it says in the description of the app.
If you’re looking for a solution that requires no ‘sketchy’ client, this supports rtsp and a few other protocols. Works with obs virtual cam really well
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.pas.webcam
I do this on 13 with a normal app. Why would you use a sketchy app?
Having tested Android 14 a while, there have been some nice battery life improvements. I’d consider that worthwhile.
Indeed.
After I updated my Pixel 6A, I noticed it comfortably lasts 1,5 - 2 days with light use (music streaming + Bluetooth, youtube, comic book reading, occasional maps navigation etc).
Before the update it lasted about 1-1,5 days with the same amount of use.
I don’t have any screenshots to verify this (from accubattery or sth similar), so take this as anecdotal.
It wouldn’t shock me. A lot of improvements to 14 are reeling in idle usage. In fact, that’s a big focus on the last 3 or 4 Android versions, and something Android is doing to catch up to iOS.
It seems better for battery life to do batching and budgeting of background activities as much as possible, instead of continuous, unregulated usage.
I think the one thing I miss is that Android used to have idle background battery usage estimates, so that you knew which apps were killing your battery in the background. It’s not quite as easy to figure that out anymore, but maybe something new will come along to help out with that.
I think the one thing I miss is that Android used to have idle background battery usage estimates, so that you knew which apps were killing your battery in the background. It’s not quite as easy to figure that out anymore, but maybe something new will come along to help out with that.
I always use Franco Kernel Manager for this, along with Better Battery Stats to detect warlocks, in case there are any.
My device is rooted, but as far as I know root is not required to do this.
You’d need to keep an eye for a longer time to have a better metric that is for sure but usually a new OS update implies background stuff going all the time to make the system behave better… So if even with that downside you are perceiving an improvement that seems like good news!
I wish Ars handed over coverage of Android to a person who wasn’t this unabashedly hostile against it and Google. These same people claim “revolutionary” changes when Apple so much as modifies one bit of the iPhone’s layout.
Ron Amadeo anti-Android? You can’t be serious?
Ron Amadeo never covered Apple products afaik and sometimes he can be annoying and concentrating on little things, but most of the time he’s very good and objective.
I didn’t even notice any difference really
I don’t care about costumizations. Just give me better under the hood optimizations for better battery
That’s exactly what they did - and exactly what this post is complaining about.
It’s always like this: several user facing features? Stop bloating the OS, we want optimization and bug fixes!
But fixes and optimizations? This update adds nothing new! We want more features and redesigned UI elements!
They have done some work here. There’s a 30% reduction in cold application starts, which improves performance and battery life. Android 14 is also far more aggressive at restricting CPU resources in idle apps.
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