Google to Transform Pixel Phones to ‘Dashcams’ – Here are our Thoughts

To use the Dashcam feature, you must mount your Pixel phone on your car’s dashboard – all throughout your travel. You'll also need a mount to keep your phone stable, or else your footage will be unsteady. Also, if you’re the type of person who needs to check and use your phone for work, entertainment, or for running errands, this can be really inconvenient – unless your Google Pixel works just as an extra phone.

Based on our findings, Google enabled the Dashcam feature to start operating once you connect it with a particular Bluetooth device, such as your car’s stereo or infotainment system. So basically, the recording starts as soon as you successfully pair it via Bluetooth, and ends when you disconnect.

So, it means your car must have Bluetooth connectivity for it to record automatically. It means you have to invest time to pair and unpair before you can use it. It means it won’t record as soon as you start the car. And unfortunately, it means you won’t get anything when your car is turned off. Nope, you won’t get the parking mode protection where real dash cams work best!

Security wise, the purpose of your dash cam is to capture your driving (and parking) incidents. So in the event of an accident, traffic violation, or vandalism when you leave your car unattended, you have a witness to rely on. The footage must defend you from wrong accusations, wrong tickets, and could save you lots of money from insurance claims. It’s designed to protect you, and not to put you to harm.

Unfortunately, having a smartphone (as huge as the Pixel phone) on your car’s dashboard can also attract thieves. And who wants to leave their smartphone in their car while they're gone?

If you have a real dash cam installed in your vehicle, you have an eyewitness, you won’t miss a thing, and you get the eyes you need 24/7 with parking mode protection. You enjoy these features, without having to leave your car’s engine… and its Bluetooth device turned on – like what the Pixel phone requires.

While the PIxel 7 Pro can store up to a terabyte, most Pixel phones can only store 128 and 256 GB – similar to dash cam’s storage space. The difference is that dash cams only contain pure video footage, while phones have other apps, media, and files that consume depending on your use.

In line with this, Google claims that to conserve storage space, their Dashcam’s recordings will be automatically deleted after three days unless you save them. So, if you ever notice an unfamiliar dent in your car, and need to backtrack footage you recorded with your Pixel phone’s Dash cam four days ago, there’s no way you can find it, unless you manually saved it.

Additionally, the Dashcam feature says that the videos themselves are compressed, averaging around 30 MB per minute with a maximum recording length of 24 hours. Doing some math, the estimated file size for this would take approximately 43,200 MB or 43.2 GB!

Dash cams actually segment their footage into 1-2 minute long clips on average, which is useful to prevent footage corruption. If power is lost abruptly, or there are SD card issues, then there’s a real possibility of the most recent recorded file to be corrupted. With a dash cam, that would be a single minute-long file, but with the Google Pixel Dash cam? You would lose the entire, up to 24 hour, recording. 

For dash cams, recorded videos are rather compressed too. However, dash cams typically use a standard video codec, such as H.264 or H.265. These video codecs work by reducing the amount of data needed to represent the video, while still maintaining high-quality visuals.

With real dash cams, the story is different. Since it has motion and impact detection, buffered recording, Emergency Lock or Live Event Upload features present in Cloud services, videos of incidents get automatically saved — not just during, but also before and after the actual incident. This gives you enough evidence, while also making sure that you won’t lose them.

We know how phones are temperature sensitive, and Google Pixel is not an exception. When we did a test last December 2022 about smartphones being used as dash cams, we tried installing a Driver App to a Google Pixel 6. Just note that Google isn't the first to do something like this. There are various dash cam apps available on the iOS and Android store too! There’s Droid dash cam, Drive Recorder, AutoGuard Dash Cam - Blackbox, AutoBoy Dash Cam - Blackbox and DailyRoads Voyager.

To be fair, its lithium battery didn’t explode or melt. However, it got significantly warm. Take note, it’s December so it’s pretty chilly! Now, what more if you use your smartphone as a dash cam on a hot summer afternoon?

We also brought up this concern among others in our video discussing more general apps that also turn your phone into a dash cam. Check it out here.

Upon checking other reports online, we stumbled upon a related blog by Android Authority. The author says:

So, if you use your smartphone as a dashcam, especially if you’re traveling a long distance, you have to be ready for overheating issues. Dash cams also heat up after hours of continuous recording. But since they are built with supercapacitors and are designed to be left on the dash, with plenty of ventilation, they can withstand a reasonable amount of heat, varying between the different models.

If there’s one thing that could impress us with this Google Pixel feature, that can be video quality. Interestingly, Google is one of the smartphones equipped with the same image sensor brand for dash cams, Sony Exmor. However, we discovered that the Dashcam mode cannot be enabled in ultrawide cameras, therefore, don’t expect a wide angle view for your footage either. Yup, lanes are limited too.

And when it comes to night time driving and low light situations, we can say that dash cams do better. Aside from having Super Night Vision, new dash cams like the Thinkware U3000 and the VIOFO A139 Pro already sport the latest Sony technology, the Sony STARVIS 2 image sensors. Unlike smartphone cameras, the Sony STARVIS 2 tech in dash cams work best in low-light, has improved clarity, and even assists in saving energy for parking mode. That’s how advanced it is!

Again, to be fair, in broad daylight, the Google Pixel camera does a decent job of capturing videos. It can also record audio, too! So, if you need short clips for your travel vlogs and adventures, we also see this as a good replacement for a GoPro. 

The fact that Google must have mistakenly pushed out an internal beta version of the Dashcam app reminds us of two things – that all-knowing Google is unstoppable in transforming one device to another, and that consumers like ourselves must be careful with all the ‘smart’ options given to them.

At first glance, you will surely be amazed with how a smartphone can be a dash cam at the same time. But if you think about the overall convenience, cost, and safety in the long run, you would certainly pick a real dash cam over this.

Still, we think this innovative smartphone-to-dashcam feature is not a mistake, especially for light recordings for travel vlogs, reels, and TikTok videos. However, in terms of protection and security, installing a dash cam will not in any way be a mistake, but definitely a best decision.