Apple’s not the only company that’s had issues with OLED displays this year. According to early reviewers, Google’s Pixel 2 XL suffers from screen burn-in, which leaves faint outlines of the phone’s navigation buttons on the display.
Needless to say, that’s a bit of an issue if it turns out to be widespread. Google says that it is “actively investigating” the potential problem.
A potential major issues
Screen burn-in isn’t that uncommon, although in this case it would be incredibly premature, given that the review handsets have only been used for a matter of days.
That’s some pretty wild OLED burn-in on the Pixel 2 XL after maybe 7 days of full-time use pic.twitter.com/EPJTs6D0Kg
— Alex Dobie (@alexdobie) October 22, 2017
It’s also not the only complaint about the Pixel displays. People regularly criticized the first-gen handset for its muddy colors and grainy texture, neither of which are befitting of OLED.
“The Pixel 2 XL screen has been designed with an advanced POLED technology, including QHD+ resolution, wide color gamut, and high contrast ratio for natural and beautiful colors and renderings,” Google told The Verge in a statement. “We put all of our products through extensive quality testing before launch and in the manufacturing of every unit. We are actively investigating this report.”
It will be interesting to see if this turns out to be a widespread problem, or just a fault affecting a small number of units — which unfortunately just happen to include one sent out for review.
Of course, if this was Apple, people would be rushing to lambaste the company, while rivals would be piling on to capitalize on the situation. As it is, despite Google being a tech giant, the Pixel phones are still small-time players, which means this will likely go ignored for the most part.
You can read our article on how the Pixel 2 stacks up against Apple’s new iPhones here.
