The latest flagship phone from Google, Pixel 2 XL, announced at the Made By Google event is already giving display troubles within one week of its usage. Although the smartphone didn’t roll out to the users yet, Android Central, Verge, and CNET have observed screen burn-in problems in their Pixel 2 XL review phones.
For those who find this term new, Screen burn-in is a display problem where traces of the same image appears on the screen even after changing the display to something else. This usually occurs in OLED and POLED displays at the notification bar or navigation buttons or home screen icons.
First noticed by Android Central, Alex Dobie shared a tweet with a picture of Pixel 2 screen burn-in on Twitter. The website mentioned that the screen burn-in is visible when a grey image is viewed with a ghost image of the home, back, and the recent apps button. The Verge also mentioned that even they observed screen burn-in their Google Pixel 2 XL review phone.
Meanwhile, CNET has also mentioned about the screen burn issue saying that they observed faint but noticeable ghost images of the notification bar and navigational hotkeys at the bottom of the screen. They observed the screen burn in only one Pixel 2 review unit out of 4 phones.
The cause of the problem is still unknown because there is another phenomenon called image retention where hints of the previous screen are visible even after you’ve moved away and had something new on the display.
Usually, Image retention is associated with LCD panels and Screen burn is associated with OLED displays. Image Retention is observed in LG G6 or LG V20 phones. Image retention is temporary and it won’t appear after a short time, but this isn’t the case in Screen burn issues.
Google is aware of the issues and said it is “actively investigating” the problem. The company made a statement saying: “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. 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.”
As the handsets aren’t rolled out to the users, Google still has time to fix the issue. And if you face the screen burn problem on Pixel 2 XL, you can use the warranty replacement from the manufacturer after a week or a month of usage.
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