Pixel 2, #ColorGate, and OLED is HARD

I've owned almost every Nexus and the original Pixel, but problems with the Pixel 2 display may force me to look elsewhere for my yearly Android fix.

I bought most of Google's Nexus phones, starting with the Nexus One. I bought the original Pixel. I pre-ordered the Pixel 2 XL right after the event. Now I'm thinking of canceling that order. The reason? It seems like Google chose to ship bad displays on their flagship phones.

Before you get your lazy, dismissive "fanboy", "biased", or "hater" retorts primed, it's not me who's saying that. It's the reviewers and Android experts.

Andrew Martonik writing for Android Central:

Google's biggest selling point on the Pixel 2 XL's display was its color accuracy and the fact that it could reproduce 100% of the DCI-P3 color space. And to my eyes, that's clearly where all of the tuning time went: accuracy above all else.

Since Google went with pOLED (plastic substrate OLED), it also has issues with viewing angles:

No matter how you feel about the colors you'll notice an apparent color shifting when viewing the phone off-axis at all, to the point where holding the phone at an angle the colors at the top of the display (further from you) are more blue/green than what's at the bottom.

Then there's this:

The 2880x1440 resolution is plenty high, but the Pixel 2 XL exhibits the same sort of soft grain and grit as the V30 on white backgrounds when scrolling — one of those things you can't un-see once it's been pointed out. It's something we expect to see on super low-end phones, but not anything remotely high-end in the past few years — and it's surely not a problem that Samsung has with its OLED displays nowadays.

Alex Dobie, also from Android Central, agrees:

So Pixel 2 is the best small Android phone you can buy. Easily
Pixel 2 XL? It's a bit more complicated. Screen has issues, is not $850-level

— Alex Dobie (@alexdobie) October 17, 2017

It's not just Android Central either. Dieter Bohn, writing for the Verge:

The charitable way to put it is that Google opted for something practical when it could have gone bolder. The less charitable way to put it is that the Pixel 2 XL has a bad screen with bad color tuning.

Ron Amadeo, writing for Ars Technica:

The Pixel 2 XL display has a consistent "dirty" grain to it, and you can see it all the time if you know what to look for. But the dirt is most noticeable in a dark room with the screen at 0-percent brightness, which is a totally normal, "night-time" use case. Any time there's a solid color background—like, say, in a list with a white background—you'll see the grain. It jumps out when you're scrolling, when the text moves but the layer of grain is stationary. If you're not in the "night-time" scenario, the grain is much less noticeable. But if you look closely, especially during scrolling, you can see it is always present.

At first, I was tempted to simply cancel my Pixel 2 XL order and get the regular sized Pixel 2 instead.

Russell Holy, from — you guessed it — Android Central, disabused me of that option:

About the Pixel 2 being "more accurate" pic.twitter.com/qPtJKsH5Kj

— Russell Holly (@russellholly) October 17, 2017

It's ironic since, when Android Oreo was announced, many praised it's new color management features. Unfortunately, that doesn't seem to have helped with either of these phones. Or either of these panels.

Looks like the Pixel 2 XL suffers from the same problem as the V30: LG still cannot consistently make a quality OLED display at scale.

— DΞRΞK ⚡ KΞSSLΞR (@derekakessler) October 17, 2017

To be fair, not every reviewer mentioned the issue. I don't know how much of that is sincere and how much is the "grading on a curve" problem I called out last year. Some reviewers called out the poor feel, thanks to the coating on the unibody, and insufficient battery life, so it could just be general inconsistency at work. But that's not good either.

I used #ColorGate facetiously in the title but I have no doubt that had reviewers found the same issues with the iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus displays, that hashtag would be trending and showing up in headlines across the web. And to be clear, I'm not saying Apple is treated unfairly. I'm saying every vendor should be treated the same way, otherwise it''s potential customers like me who are being treated unfairly.

So, as someone who ordered the Pixel XL sight unseen, I'm now stuck in a quandary. I'm more than a little disappointed Google allowed the Pixel 2 phones to ship like this.

Granted, I say that as someone who primarily lives on iPhones, and Apple is famously obsessed when it comes to panels. It individually calibrates it's current LCD panels at the subpixel level, it works to achieve the widest viewing angles possible, it applies not only proven color management systems, but technologies like TrueTone that match the ambient color temperature so whites don't look yellow or blue — they look paper white.

That's why I think the Pixel displays will bother me so much.

OLED is hard. The technology has some amazing qualities but also has some real gotchas if your hardware game isn't tight. A display is the sum of many parts: Panel, hardware engineering, calibration, color management, software system, and more. Google's Android Oreo has made huge strides forward with sRGB Extended, 16-bit float. There's stuff in there I hope Apple adopts as well. But if the panel is substandard and the calibration and accuracy are off, none of that matters. It's like putting stone tires on a Ferrari.

It's the same reason I'm really excited to spend more time with iPhone X. Apple waited a long time to bring OLED to iPhone, even after using it on Apple Watch and Touch Bar. When Apple did, it went with a Samsung panel, which is the best OLED in the industry right now, and then added all the display tech the company has spent the last few years building out, including sub-pixel anti-aliasing, Apple's own color management, TrueTone, and more. It's like putting racing tires on a Formula 1.

Meanwhile, my Pixel 2 XL is only scheduled to ship in December, because Canada, so I have some time to decide. Right now I'm leaning towards canceling, but we'll see. There are some things that really excite me about it, like the Pixel Vision Core that hardware accelerates HDR+, for example.

I want a really great Google phone — and one that doesn't demand all my personal data before it will enable features, by the way — and I want Google to want it too.