back to article Google's answer to the Pixel 2 XL CRT-style screen burn in: Lower the brightness

“Ask more of your phone,” is the Pixel 2's official marketing slogan. It's not a good sign when early adopters are asking Google for more support. And they got a little today, as Google has starting rolling out Android firmware updates to address hardware woes plaguing its new Pixel 2 and flagship Pixel 2 XL smartphones. You …

  1. Bob Vistakin
    FAIL

    Avoid

    When's the Pixel 3 out?

    1. goldcd

      My Pixel 1, audio-jack-using self

      is asking exactly this.

    2. Dr Mantis Toboggan
      FAIL

      Re: Avoid

      You know all these made up problems only "affect" the pixel2XL and not the pixel2 right?

      Ooops, did the clickbait internet not feed you that info???

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Avoid

        ..... the reported faint NFC related clicking sound only affects some Pixel 2's, and not the 2XL.

        1. leexgx

          Re: Avoid

          my bluetooth headset was clicking as well (phone idle no audio or call, it would click every 10-30 seconds) it does not click any more (pixel 2)

          also the burn in with the buttons at the bottom the fade effect also has been ported to the pixel 2 as well (i dont know if they just blanket used the same screen nit settings for XL and none XL pixel 2)

      2. CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

        Re: Avoid

        You know all these made up problems

        Put down that extra-large bottle of Google KoolAid..

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    When's the Pixel 3 out?

    To buy or to avoid?

    On the current linear progression the Pixel 4 will be eleven hundred a pop, and crapper than all previous Google branded phones. Just as Samsung and Apple, Google are taking the piss out of the gullible. Even for this flawed version, 800 nicker for a bloody phone? Less than two hundred gets you a bloody good device these days, other than for the sad-sack brand victims, too timid to look at such devices.

    1. VinceH
      Coat

      When asked for a comment on this issue, Google replied "We are become Apple."

      1. Uncle Slacky Silver badge
        Mushroom

        "...the destroyer of screens"

  3. cambsukguy

    I worried about the Nav bar...

    ...On my phone when I got it years ago.

    Not because of burn-in, I never knew it happened on phones.

    I worried in case the bar didn't work or disappeared and wouldn't return.

    Now, I love it; I can disappear it if I want more screen real estate (or set some apps to do it) and it never fails to appear or operate.

    The Nav bar can be made to match the UI theme, although I prefer it natural.

    I have also set it to allow double tap off the buttons, which switches the display off, no button press required.

    No burn-in visible, I looked, hard.

    It is an OLED and it is hi-res, even by today's standards I think (563ppi).

    It is less bright though than these fancy new ones though, although anything other than bright sunlight is fine and it kicks up the saturation/brightness violently when it is sunny, which changes the colours but leaves it more readable at least.

    Having no UI buttons really need not be an issue and should be a benefit - it just requires them to work properly.

    1. rdhood

      Re: I worried about the Nav bar...

      This is the way it works on my $60 Huawei phone, and its fine. There is absolutely no reason for the nav buttons to be visible all of the time.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Facepalm

    Cure for crt-style display burn-in

    The original cure for crt-style display burn-in was to slowly move the display by applying a voltage to the X and X deflector coils. So a static image would slowly move left-right and up-and-down.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Joke

      Re: Cure for crt-style display burn-in

      Deflector coils ?

      What is this... Star Trek ?

      1. Neil Barnes Silver badge

        Re: Cure for crt-style display burn-in

        Well, Star Trek vintage, anyway.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Alien

          Re: Cure for crt-style display burn-in

          @Neil Barnes: "Well, Star Trek vintage, anyway."

          Vintage Star Trek .. that was long before the current offering 'Discovery', where the co-star is a non-binary-gender entity and is married to a mutant cyborg kangaroo and the only caucasian heterosexual human allowed on the Bridge is also the chief villain and a Brit. I sense the political correctness is much strong here :]

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Coffee/keyboard

        Re: Cure for crt-style display burn-in

        On the iPhone X, go to settings -> general -> dilithium crystals -> calibrate. Just tap 'ok' if you get "the engines'll nae take it" warning.

    2. DropBear
      Trollface

      Re: Cure for crt-style display burn-in

      "the X and X deflector coils"

      ...is this some sort of female CRT? Where only the male ones have X and Y coils...?

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    All these burn in problems take me back to the time of CRT's leaving pr0n on the desktop without a screensaver (some of us last longer than 5 minutes) overnight by accident.

    Try explaining that one to your partner.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Top Failure is MS Windows 10.

      I get enough strange looks without talking to my hand.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      "Try explaining that one to your partner."

      It's the new inclusive feature, the Forbidden Augmentation Colorizing Kit, also known as F.A.C.K. It's designed to project one random image across the screen permanently to improve users activities and increase creativity in a productive environment by stimulating the users' brainwaves with the highly innovative color emitting technology.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Try explaining that one to your partner.

      Simply explain that you need to look at porn because your partner has let herself go, and wasn't up to much in the first place to be honest. I find this approach sets the stage for some honest and fair dialogue.

      Let us know how you get on.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Let us know how you get on.

        That suggestion might get you an "accessory to murder" rap, if the OP's other half takes it badly and relieves them of their mortal coil.

  6. bjr

    It's a great phone

    I have a Pixel 2XL and all this whining about the display is nonsense. The blue shift is a complete non-issue, it only occurs when you look at the phone at an extreme tilt, it doesn't exist when you look at the phone at a normal angle. This time of year we don't have much sun where I live but people on the forums who live in sunnier climes report that they can read the display in bright sunlight, a little blue shift because of a polarizer is a great tradeoff for the ability to see the display in the sun.

    As for the colors, they are great. When I first got it they looked washed out but I've since install the 8.1 beta and now the display looks fine. Comparing my Pixel2XL to my Nexus 6P side by side, I don't see any significant difference, if anything I like the 2XL a little better. All other aspects of the 2XL are as good as everyone says. The photos and videos are fantastic. Android Auto is much more reliable than it was on my Nexus 6P. Another really important feature is that it works great as a phone. Nobody every mentions phone calls in the reviews which is strange because these things are called phones, but the voice quality and the ability to hold a call is vastly better then it was on my Nexus 6P, that maybe due to Verizon having treated the 6P as a step child because they didn't sell it, or it might be that the Pixel 2XL really is that much better, but it's night and day better.

    One more thing, why would anyone want to have physical nav buttons? they are a complete waste of space. My 2 year old Nexus 6P didn't have nav buttons and it doesn't show any burn in, neither did my 4 year old Nexus 5.

    1. Sandtitz Silver badge
      Thumb Down

      Re: It's a great phone

      "One more thing, why would anyone want to have physical nav buttons? they are a complete waste of space. My 2 year old Nexus 6P didn't have nav buttons and it doesn't show any burn in, neither did my 4 year old Nexus 5."

      Uh, both Nexus 5 and 6P had enough bezel space below the screen to accommodate physical buttons. Also, physical buttons are always there, no need for a swipe from below or other shenanigans.

      1. AMBxx Silver badge

        Re: It's a great phone

        My BB Priv has lots and lots of physical buttons. Wouldn't swap them.

        It has the nav buttons on the display. They're a pain in the rear.

      2. tiggity Silver badge

        Re: It's a great phone

        Fully agree on hardware buttons.

        They still work when a bit of your touch screen dies.

        I had a "dead band" on a screen after phone got dropped (it was in a case so no "broken glass" but impact kinetic energy damage) and could still use the phone (rotating when necessaryto get around some of dead band, a bit of screen real estate could not be used but nothing 100% vital to phone use (just meant a couple of games unplayable that had fixed orientation so rotate workaround not possible) ), I would have been struggling a lot if that dead band had been where the on screen nav buttons were

        Hardware buttons are good, as still liekly to work if software goes on the blink. I have zero confidence in software only nav bars, bound to go on the blink just when you need them

        1. ChrisC Silver badge

          Re: It's a great phone

          "Fully agree on hardware buttons.

          They still work when a bit of your touch screen dies."

          But hardware buttons can also fail if the phone is damaged, and flipping the phone from portrait to landscape or vice versa isn't then likely to work around the problem in the same way as you were able to do with your touchscreen issue.

      3. leexgx

        Re: It's a great phone

        i agree the on screen buttons are a waste of space (tomtom does not go full screen so the buttons always show on mine, not sure why tomtom will not go fullscreen when its running i dont need to see notification bar or my buttons)

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: It's a great phone

      This whole pixel hate spew was a viral fakenews created by apple and their media cronies all chasing their billions of backhander slush fund in the run-up to the iPhone X launch.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: It's a great phone

        This whole pixel hate spew was a viral fakenews created by apple and their media cronies all chasing their billions of backhander slush fund in the run-up to the iPhone X launch.

        So much for AI content generation: It appears that Google's shillbot requires a lot of work still. Currently it appears to have the sentience of a talking goldfish that recycles recurrent words from Facebook, and then places the resultant pro-Google semi-gibberish on other sites and forums.

        Amanfrommars 1, where are you when we need you?

    3. big_D Silver badge

      Re: It's a great phone

      Yeah, I fail to see how calibrating the screen to display "real" colours, as opposed to over saturated colours is a "problem".

      I rejected a bunch of TVs last time around, because the displays were over saturated and I wanted more realistic colour representation...

      As to burn in, I had that on my old iMac 24" LCD and a 20.5" LG LCD display, well, persistence anyway. The image of the menu bar and the dock would ghost over films or games on the iMac and on the LG display, if I played a game for long periods, the "skin" around the status bars and inventory slots was visible on the screen for several hours afterwards.

      These problems have been around for decades, it is funny that they are now suddenly a problem.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Nope

    "A new saturated color mode has been added, again to compensate for display quality issues."

    Nope, it's to satisfy owners of crappy phones from Samsung and Apple with oversaturated displays and that is what hipsters have decided the world should look like....

    1. Dave 126 Silver badge

      Re: Nope

      I've heard much criticism of oversaturated colours on Samsung OLED phones over the years, but this is the first time I've heard of it on iPhones which all bar one are IPS.

      But yeah, I'd heard Google had deliberately tuned the Pixel screen towards more natural colours than Samsung traditionally does.

  8. Neoc

    Meh

    Old news. I have a Galaxy S7 and it suffers from burn-in.

  9. ma1010
    WTF?

    Progress?

    It's kind of strange to me that Apple and Google are having the same sort of problem with their phones. My 3 year old HTC M8 works just fine. My wife has one the same age, and she uses the hell out of it every day. No burn in, everything works, battery still holds a charge. And one of these new "problem" phones costs almost twice what we paid for our HTC M8s ($450 or so).

    Going back to screen burn is reminiscent, as the author pointed out, of old CRTs in the late 80's and early 90's. I thought we'd moved beyond that. Guess I'll be waiting a while before I "upgrade" my phone.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Progress?

      Your phone uses an LED screen. They do not suffer burn in. These new phones have OLED screens, which is a different technology.

      1. LaeMing
        Boffin

        Re: Progress?

        Which is why I bought a Nexus 5x just before the Pixel units came out. Not happy with OLED technology's lifespan. By the time I upgrade again, hopefully micro-LED displays will be a thing!

    2. CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

      Re: Progress?

      Going back to screen burn is reminiscent, as the author pointed out, of old CRTs in the late 80's and early 90's

      I suspect that most of the people discovering this now were probably still crapping their nappies in the time period mentioned..

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    High pitched whine

    Are you sure that this is coming from the handset and not from the owners?

  11. PaulR79

    Physical vs on-screen

    I've had phones with both over the years and my current handset, an HTC 10, has the middle ground of a navigation bar with touch sensitive buttons. Sometimes I prefer one over the other but if I don't hit a physical, touch sensitive button just right it might not register the key press. That really bothers me. Physical allows more screen to be used for everything else but can look ugly if done badly. On-screen can change to suit what you're viewing but in my experience it rarely, if ever, does.

  12. Warm Braw

    Ask more of your phone

    OK, Google, how much did I pay for this?

    While the Pixel 2 may well be annoyingly unfinished (it's a Google product, after all), I suspect a lot of people complaining are simply finding ways to justify their buyers' remorse: having excitedly shelled out around £900 for the latest bit of shiny, they've got it home and found out it's just a phone after all.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Ask more of your phone

      having excitedly shelled out around £900 for the latest bit of shiny, they've got it home and found out it's just a phone after all

      Imagine the biting disappointment when they realise that they've spent £900 on a £300 device. There's a thought to warm me up on a frosty morning.

      At least (most) iPhone buyers shelling out £1,300 will NEVER have that realisation, simply because they can't conceive that the new shiney is anything other than as perfectly formed as <insert actor/actress of your choice here>'s buttocks.

  13. RyokuMas
    Coat

    Copycat...

    So not content with copying Microsoft, Google now feel that they have to copy Apple...

  14. TVU Silver badge

    Pixel 2 XL Screen Burn

    As with the Apple iPhone 4 antenna issue, something's very wrong when the manufacturer effectively blames the user for problem (hold it differently or turn the brightness down). Get your act together, Chocolate Factory, and start to produce better goods and have more quality control staff (you can afford it). That's the way to really solve the problem.

  15. JeffyPoooh
    Pint

    Oh dear, that'll cause some mental trauma...

    This doesn't apply to all, but it certainly applies to some.

    Some people seek to have some small island of Utter Perfection™ in their otherwise tumultuous lives. In buying a Break-The-Bank High End $1000-price class mobile phone, they may be assuming that it'll provide that tranquil island of Utter Perfection™. It can cause them significant mental trauma when their Reassuringly-Expensive™ gadget significantly misbehaves.

    Sympathies to those so afflicted.

  16. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Smartphones are for dumb people

    Now it's frickin screen burn in?!?!?!?!!

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