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Your Pixel can now double up as a full Android PC with nothing more than a USB-C cable
(www.androidauthority.com)
this post was submitted on 04 Mar 2026
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Oh, so your Pixel, but not my Pixel.
Let's be clear, for a feature that Samsung phones have had for a decade at this point.
This feature debuted on the Moto Atrix in 2011. There was even a version of Ubuntu that could use the feature.
They sure did have a version of it. But you had to run their privacy nightmare app suite on their mutilated android OS. So no one cared or cares.
Yeah, I have a pixel 7 and was disappointed on vacation to learn that its USB-C port can't do video when I wanted to plug it into a hotel room TV.
I don't get why this is a Pixel thing at all and not an Android thing though. Shouldn't any Android OS device that can do full video output over USB-C be able to do this?
Video out is frustratingly uncommon. Samsung, some Sony's, and only very recently Pixels. Google was vocally against video out for a long time. And SD cards (gotta pay for drive). You were expected to roll the dice with whether Chromecast works with a random TV and wifi combination.
Pixels were popular for two reasons: the camera and "basic black rectangle" device (RIP Nexus).
Yeah, Chromecast has been kind of a disaster for Google imho, in that it never got widespread adoption in TVs. If they'd pushed an open standard they might've been able to get that over the finish-line and get buy-in from 3rd parties. But instead every smart TV and smart phone has its own video streaming approach, it seems.
The LG V20 had it all, still miss daily driving that phone
Not all USB-C are equal. They can add or remove features as they please
Right but I'm specifically referring to devices where their USB-C port is capable of full video out.
It's supposed to be for Android 16 kn general once the feature is fully baked
It will eventually. Pixels are usually the first ones to get everything because they are first-party devices.
I am confused.
In developer options in basic android you can simply enable the feature right?
My old Sony xperia 5 ii can do that and it definitely isn't a Sony feature...
There's hardware required to shunt the display out the USB port and since it's not a super in demand feature they usually don't implement it. As such the software for looking nice while doing it isn't as developed.
But yes, it's been in developer settings for years, and was usable if your hardware supported it.
Our Pixel ⚒️🎵
The 4 (iirc) also had USBC video out but google removed that functionality only to now have a reason to sell you a new phone. I hope its actually good and they publish source for it as part of AOSP, otherwise this news is fucking useless.
There were stability issues with the video out. People love to assume malice but most of the time there was actually good reasons
Thats nonsense, there are plenty of phones and tablets with usbc video output. Its been a feature for like a decade. Other companies have had working desktop modes for a long time and google just abandoned their work on it until they decided they could use it as a marketing feature. They probably just didnt want the pixel to cut into the chromebook marketshare.
this has been well covered by now. just cause it works in product x, doesn't mean it was implemented correctly in product y
Yep. Pixel 7P over here really bummed that this isn't available because of poor choices Google made at the hardware level on this phone.