Apple has a feature where you can use your iPhone as a Webcam for your MacBook. It’s seamless, requires no setup, and just a simple toggle in the Settings app. Continuity Camera is trendy, and it’s handy. It uses the ultrawide to crop into your area and provides a desk view. Since the sensors and lenses on your phone are much larger than your laptop, the view is much crisper and of much higher quality. The resolution is much higher.
Instead of appearing like a pixelated, grainy mess, the output will look really usable. Samsung and Microsoft plan to finally bring this feature to the Android side. For now, it’s mostly exclusive to the upcoming Galaxy Book lineup. If you want it on your Windows laptop, third-party apps already let you do that.
Turn Your Samsung Phone into a PC Webcam
This feature on Samsung phones will finally address the issue of low resolutions on webcams. Since laptops are made thin, especially around the screen area, it’s impossible to fit larger cameras there. Samsung’s partnership with Microsoft is expanding. We already have a very capable ecosystem between Samsung phones and Windows laptops.
These devices work together with perfect interoperability. They have almost the same, if not more, features than Apple’s ecosystem. Once this feature rolls out to Galaxy Books, it’ll also have the option to blur the background and automatic framing, which is similar to Center Stage. It tracks you and moves the field of view to fit you into the frame.
According to the leaks from Android Police, the minimum requirement for this might be Android 14 (One UI 6.0). This feature might also make it to the Galaxy Tab S8 and S9 series. We’re unsure if you can use your tablet cameras as a webcam since they have decent front cameras. There’s a chance that we might see this feature on all newer Samsung laptops, like most of the Galaxy Books with Windows 11 (24H1).
The leaked image says that you need One UI 6.0 or higher to use this feature, and it needs a Galaxy Book Series with Windows 11. However, Windows 11 24H1 isn’t even out yet, and we expect it to come out in March 2024. This will finally bring support for this feature on Galaxy Books and Samsung phones. You mostly need to download the Microsoft Phone Link to use it.
