Gadgetory

what's going on Brian Tong here and welcome to Google licious for everything Google you could think of the Google pixel 2 and 2 XL we're riding a wave of momentum last week initial reviews were high to Google pop-up shops opened up over the weekend but the Google pixel 2xl their flagship phone is reportedly having screen burnin issues now Android Central's Alex Adobe first reported seeing faint outlines of the navigation buttons against a grey background on the bottom of his pixel 2 XL that's after about a week of use and multiple outlets are now reporting the same thing with their pixel 2 XL phones now this could be more of an image retention issue instead of actual screen burnin but all signs are leaning more towards burnin and it's not good either way now here's Google's official statement on the issue the pixel to excel screen has been designed with an advanced P OLED 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 so they're looking into it because they better now I'm kind of glad I wasn't able to get a panda pixel to excel because they didn't have any and we'll just have to wait and see how this resolves itself now there was even a little controversy before this screen burnin issue about the pixel to excels display with report saying that shifted colors to a slight bluish tint when you rotate the phone in your hand at a 45 degree angle the LGB 30 had the same exact thing with its P OLED screen I've tried the pixel to excel in person and come on it's really a non-issue to me because you'll always be looking at your screen head on then people were complaining its colors were washed out and not as vibrant because a lot of you are used to the saturated look of the galaxy OLED screens now the colors look more natural to me most people will only even see this side-by-side and again come on it's another non-issue for me but then most people complaining online about this are blowing it up and have never seen the phone in person now in another official statement from Google they said we designed the pixel display to have a more natural and accurate rendition of colors this year but we know some people prefer more vivid colors so we've added an option to boost colors by 10% for a more saturated display we're always looking at people's responses to pixel and we will look at adding more color options through a software update if we see a lot of feedback you know it's never a good thing when you have to make two statements in less than a week about your new phone now the screen burnin that's a real issue but these other complaints to me are just over exaggerations either way it's been a tough first week for the pixel too but they didn't make it any easier on themselves when it came to they're made by Google pop-up shop now there's only two in the entire US one in New York and the other in Los Angeles I checked out the LA store it looks great and these two guys were lost daydreaming but more than a handful of people left the store without a pixel two or two Excel phone specifically because they were only selling the Verizon version of the phone and not an unlocked one but if you really wanted one you could sign up for a three gig prepay plan for 40 bucks then pay a $20 activation fee and once you do that you could then pop in your AT&T or t-mobile chip and use the pixel - but Sprint still won't work until their network is upgraded come on who wants to do that instead of just buying the phone outright bottom line come on don't let people who want to buy a phone from you walk out of the store that one make it easy I saw several people who left the line on AT&T and t-mobile who were ready to buy one but they didn't because of this so you combine this with the screen burnin issues and I'm sorry but that deserves a Buddha and I know it hurts but it's been a really bad week for you especially on launch week and knowing how competitive the smartphone landscape is you just got to do better Google in fact they might have saved some people for more frustration depending on how this screen burnin issue plays out now moving on I'm not a big fan of these let's see what it takes to destroy a phone because most of this never really happens in real life we just want to get some video stream views but jerry-rigged everything did a little more sensible test to see how durable the pixel 2 was deliberately scratching it in different ways and yes if you bend it really hard in your hands it will Bend now the other test by foam buff is also a little more realistic if you drop it on its backside it survives pretty well especially compared to an iPhone 8 with its all glass back if you drop the pixel to on its screen it will crack good to know and in another pixel to excel story that is likely to make the rounds 9:00 to 5:00 google has found that the top speaker on the flagship phone is about 10 decibels quieter than the bottom speaker now they discovered this by using a noise meter app on an iPhone and an Android app that allows you to control which speaker sound is played from for the pixel to excel 9:00 to 5:00 maket earlier heard from their sources that a pixel to excel Hardware defect was being fixed where the top speaker at louder volumes was causing vibrations so they decided to turn it down with software now Google also tried turning down the bottom speaker but it made the overall max volume level too low overall for their liking so tested this out and their tipster was right on the money the top speaker is louder than the bottom one 2/3 now no this is not a deal-breaker but you know what it's just another thing to add to the list of annoying little things happening around the pixel to excel right now lesson making phones is as easy all and I sure as hell can't do it all right that's it for this week you can email me at Google issues at cnet.com or tweet me at Brian Tong thanks so much for watching we'll catch y'all next time for some more of that Google inches