tl;dr: We’re very confident that the Pixel 2 delivers an exceptional smartphone experience, and to give users peace of mind, every Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL will now come with a 2-year warranty worldwide.
On October 4, we
announced Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL, our new 5” and 6” smartphones with beautiful, high-resolution
OLED displays; all-day battery that charges super fast; easy access to an even more capable Google Assistant; and, the world’s highest rated smartphone camera, along with free, unlimited storage for all of your photos and videos. We’ve been excited by the positive response from many of you and reviewers who have praised the new Pixel 2 phones.
Since launch, we’ve also received reports of suspected issues related to the Pixel 2 XL display. We take these reports very seriously and wanted to provide an update. First, there’s been some feedback about the Pixel 2 XL displays not appearing as vibrant as other phones, and in the past few days, there have been a small number of reports of differential aging (also referred to as “burn-in”) on the Pixel 2 XL’s pOLED screen.
On the topic of color saturation, we designed the Pixel 2 XL to take advantage of multiple facets of the innovative new pOLED technology, including
QHD+ resolution with 538 pixels per inch and a wide color gamut. One of our design intents was to achieve a more natural and accurate rendition of colors. We know that some people prefer more saturated colors, so both Pixel 2 phones already include an option to boost colors by 10% for a more vivid look. And based on the recent feedback, we’re adding a new mode for more saturated colors, which will be made available via a software update to both Pixel 2 phones in the next few weeks.
Regarding differential aging, we put all of our products through extensive quality assurance before launch and in the manufacturing of every unit. Thorough testing of the Pixel 2 XL display shows that its decay characteristics are similar to OLED panels used in comparable products. Our current investigation of burn-in, which started as soon as we received the first user report on October 22, confirms that the differential aging is in line with that of other premium smartphones and should not affect the normal, day-to-day user experience of the Pixel 2 XL. Regardless, we use software to safeguard the user experience and maximize the life of the OLED display, and we’ll make ongoing software updates to optimize further.
We’re very confident that the Pixel 2 delivers an exceptional smartphone experience, and to give users peace of mind, every Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL will now come with a 2-year warranty worldwide.
If you’re interested in digging into more of the technology, more details are available
here. We provide detail about the engineering of the Pixel 2 XL’s pOLED display, in tight coupling with Android 8.0 Oreo, for natural and accurate colors; we describe differential aging artifacts in OLED technology; and, we share our UI design efforts for optimizing user experience and performance of the display.
Posted by Mario Queiroz, VP, Product Management, Google Hardware
If I hadn’t read any of these posts and articles about burn in, shadow crushing, or grain at low brightness, chances are I probably wouldn’t have even noticed. If I went ahead and put all my other devices though some specific tests for god-knows-what, I’d probably discover any number of little imperfections and it’d ruin them all for me.
