Google Pixel 2 XL: A Visual Catastrophe

[Ordinarily_Greater]

how to force my Galaxy Camera to do 4x FSAA in developer option?

can the Pixel 2 give a non "pixelated" display? let's find out

[Drak3]

Good guy Mr. Tech Tips. Instead of bitching about the screen in a review, actually looks to see what options there are to fix his issues with the phone.

[chrisholland03]

15 minutes ago, LinusTech said:

I also immediately set my phones to sRGB mode or whatever is closest. 

 

Oversaturated looks “good” to the untrained eye - and to me it actually looks pretty good on the lock screen with really vibrant icons and stuff. 

 

But as soon as I fire up a video I’m like “aww hella naw!”

 

So thats might be why the pixel 2 screens look quite similar side by side with my other phones. 

My Pixel 2 had it turned on by default -- I'm assuming yours wasn't?

 

I turned it off too -- for much the same reasons.

[LAwLz]

11 hours ago, LinusTech said:

I also immediately set my phones to sRGB mode or whatever is closest. 

 

Oversaturated looks “good” to the untrained eye - and to me it actually looks pretty good on the lock screen with really vibrant icons and stuff. 

 

But as soon as I fire up a video I’m like “aww hella naw!”

 

So thats might be why the pixel 2 screens look quite similar side by side with my other phones. 

It appears that even a trained eye like yours struggles sometimes.

 

"OnePlus has opted for a 1080 screen again, but I didn't disagree with their choice last time and I don't disagree with it this time, and there are some upgrades to it too. The 3 gets this wonderfully high contrast, non-reflective, and miraculously not oversaturated AMOLED panel with white point adjustments built right into the operating system so you can tune it according to your preferences".

 

 

For those wondering, these are the saturation results for the OnePlus 3. The display is (or, was) horribly oversaturated.

Spoiler

 

[DocSwag]

2 hours ago, chrisholland03 said:

I haven't experienced the Pixel 2 XL, but my Pixel 2 has none of the display issues.

That's to be expected. the Pixel 2 has a Samsung panel but the 2 XL has the LG panel that's causing the issues.

[DocSwag]

2 hours ago, LinusTech said:

I also immediately set my phones to sRGB mode or whatever is closest. 

 

Oversaturated looks “good” to the untrained eye - and to me it actually looks pretty good on the lock screen with really vibrant icons and stuff. 

 

But as soon as I fire up a video I’m like “aww hella naw!”

 

So thats might be why the pixel 2 screens look quite similar side by side with my other phones. 

 

On 10/20/2017 at 8:33 AM, Ryan_Vickers said:

So after watching Linus's review of these new Pixels, you'll all be happy to know he made no mention of the screen looking bad, and in shots that showed it next to other phones known to be good, it did look slightly different but not bad in any way that I would point out.  I did notice one shot that seemed to confirm the "white icons going green" effect though, but it was mild.

Was the 2 XL reviewed as well or just the normal one? Because the XL is the one with the issues, but the normal one doesn't have it. Asking since only the normal one was unboxed.

1 hour ago, LAwLz said:

It appears that even a trained eye like yours struggles sometimes.

 

"OnePlus has opted for a 1080 screen again, but I didn't disagree with their choice last time and I don't disagree with it this time, and there are some upgrades to it too. The 3 gets this wonderfully high contrast, non-reflective, and miraculously not oversaturated AMOLED panel with white point adjustments built right into the operating system so you can tune it according to your preferences".

 

 

For those wondering, these are the saturation results for the OnePlus 3. The display is (or, was) horribly oversaturated.

  Reveal hidden contents

 

Personally I don't think 1080p is enough on a 5.5" display. If the sub pixel arrangement was RGB, I would agree, but with all the OLED panels it's pentile which means the effective resolution is more like 1358x764, which is not enough in a 5.5" display, IMO.

 

Hence why I believe you need a 1440p OLED display on a larger phone for it to be reasonable, because the effective resolution is lower. 2560x1440 is more like 1810x1018.

[Droidbot]

4 hours ago, DocSwag said:

Personally I don't think 1080p is enough on a 5.5" display. If the sub pixel arrangement was RGB, I would agree, but with all the OLED panels it's pentile which means the effective resolution is more like 1358x764, which is not enough in a 5.5" display, IMO.

 

Hence why I believe you need a 1440p OLED display on a larger phone for it to be reasonable, because the effective resolution is lower. 2560x1440 is more like 1810x1018.

I agree with Pentile being shit at 1080p or less at 5.5", but RGB 1080p 5.5" screens are perfect.

Pentile 1920x1080 = 1564x880

[vanished]

8 hours ago, DocSwag said:

Personally I don't think 1080p is enough on a 5.5" display. If the sub pixel arrangement was RGB, I would agree, but with all the OLED panels it's pentile which means the effective resolution is more like 1358x764, which is not enough in a 5.5" display, IMO.

3 hours ago, Droidbot said:

I agree with Pentile being shit at 1080p or less at 5.5", but RGB 1080p 5.5" screens are perfect.

Pentile 1920x1080 = 1564x880

I'm curious how you're calculating that / where you're getting those numbers

[Droidbot]

35 minutes ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

I'm curious how you're calculating that / where you're getting those numbers

https://medium.com/@suyashsrijan/1080p-pentile-is-not-true-1080p-9951b9e5c2ee

[Tech_Dreamer]

they were being too cocky with their apple rival~ish presentation & now this.

[DocSwag]

5 hours ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

I'm curious how you're calculating that / where you're getting those numbers

Sqrt(2) thing

 

This is the sub pixel layout of a pentile display:

 

Or for a more zoomed in shot of a different display to make it easier on your eyes 

(In the above picture the RGBG groups are in 2x2 squares, which might help you better visualize this)

 

In a normal RGB sub pixel layout screen, each pixel would be defined by one red, one green, and one blue sub pixel. Because of this, the number of pixels in the display=number of blue pixels=number of red pixels=number of green pixels.

 

However, in pentile RGBG displays, you'll notice that instead of having one red, one green, and one blue sub pixel in each big pixel there are actually one red, one blue, and TWO green sub pixels.

 

Now, this would be all fine and dandy if manufacturers quoted the pixel resolution of the display... except they don't. They quote the resolution of the green pixels in the display instead. And, as you can obviously tell, there are twice as many green pixels in the display as red or blue ones, since each 2x2 square is made by one red, one blue, and two green sub pixels.

 

This means that, when you're getting quoted this number x*y for the resolution of a pentile screen, you're actually getting quoted the green sub pixel resolution. In order to obtain the actual resolution, you need to divide x and y by sqrt(2) (since number of pixels is green/2, you would need to divide x and y by sqrt(2) to find the actual resolution)

 

I believe manufacturers do this because it increases longevity and stuff. Your eye is the most sensitive to green ish light so adding more green sub pixels should theoretically help.

[vanished]

2 hours ago, DocSwag said:

[...]

[...]

This makes a lot of sense, I think this is how my phone does it.  It would totally explain what I said about vertical/horizontal vs diagonal lines

[BuckGup]

So the iPhone X will be sold out for 8 months now

[LAwLz]

17 hours ago, Droidbot said:

I agree with Pentile being shit at 1080p or less at 5.5", but RGB 1080p 5.5" screens are perfect.

Pentile 1920x1080 = 1564x880

13 hours ago, Droidbot said:

https://medium.com/@suyashsrijan/1080p-pentile-is-not-true-1080p-9951b9e5c2ee

That's a terrible and very misleading way of thinking of pentile matrices.

 

5 hours ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

This makes a lot of sense, I think this is how my phone does it.  It would totally explain what I said about vertical/horizontal vs diagonal lines

I don't know which phone you got, but Samsung often uses a diamond shaped matrix for their SAMOLED screens in recent years.

[vanished]

Just now, LAwLz said:

That's a terrible and very misleading way of thinking of pentile matrices.

 

I don't know which phone you got, but Samsung often uses a diamond shaped matrix for their SAMOLED screens in recent years.

Lumia 650

On 10/19/2017 at 1:48 PM, Ryan_Vickers said:

My Lumia 650's display is beautiful imo, only OLED I've ever had and I really like it The only oddity is due to the diamond design or whatever it's called, certain colours make vertical and horizontal lines look best while making diagonal lines look pixelated (what you would expect to see on any normal display), while other colours tend to make diagonal lines look good while making vertical and horizontal lines look pixelated.  Odd, but not a big deal imo and isn't a colour-related issue like the Pixel seems to be having.

[redteam4ever]

On 19. 10. 2017 at 6:26 PM, Ryan_Vickers said:

snip

You might want to add this: https://www.androidcentral.com/google-pixel-2-xl-screen-burn

[UlsterRose]

It honestly doesn't look that ba-

Quote

That New York Times logo?  Yeah, that's supposed to be white.

I stand corrected. Holy motherfuck.

[abazigal]

On 20/10/2017 at 6:43 AM, Dabombinable said:

How did they manage to source screens so badly botched?

The short of it is that they basically don’t have a choice. Apple has essentially monopolised whatever OLED screens that Samsung was able to produce, leaving LG as the next best thing. And LG is reportedly having problems getting their display factory up and running and also experiencing poor yields. It may be another year at least before LG can sort out this mess, leaving Samsung as the sole supplier of quality OLED displays, and those are already spoken for by Apple. 

[D13H4RD]

The serious burn-in pretty much just took this phone off my list of top phones of the year.

 

Disappointing beyond all forms of compromise.

[Drak3]

After seeing the phone in other colors, I can definitely say that the thread title easily applies to the design of the back of the thing.

[mynameisjuan]

5 hours ago, D13H4RD2L1V3 said:

The serious burn-in pretty much just took this phone off my list of top phones of the year.

 

Disappointing beyond all forms of compromise.

So better color and blacks, battery life and viewing angles, for some dimmer sections only noticeable after a year or so on very specific, solid color screens when looked for? 

 

Yeah ill take OLED over LCD any day.  

[D13H4RD]

9 minutes ago, mynameisjuan said:

So better color and blacks, battery life and viewing angles, for some dimmer sections only noticeable after a year or so on very specific, solid color screens when looked for? 

 

Yeah ill take OLED over LCD any day.  

Um, this phone burns-in after less than a week.

 

And my daily driver phones have been OLED for some time now. I love OLED, but a screen that burns-in after 5 days is not a good screen.

[suicidalfranco]

1 hour ago, D13H4RD2L1V3 said:

Um, this phone burns-in after less than a week.

 

And my daily driver phones have been OLED for some time now. I love OLED, but a screen that burns-in after 5 days is not a good screen.

and LCD are affected by image persistance, not as annoying as a burn in, but still strongly noticeable when going from the home screen to other apps on both my V10 and iPhone 5S

[michaelocarroll007]

On 10/19/2017 at 3:28 PM, mynameisjuan said:

First, try the FP placement. So many people complain about it but people who actually have them found out quickly that its not bad at all. I actually prefer it over my 6P. And you can now disable bixby. I havent but have yet to accidentally hit it since release.  

i have for the last few years bought a new phone Typically Samsung every year. S7E right now i really wanted to get a S8+ but many that finger print seemed terrible and i love using a FP i forget my phone even has a lock on it. the regular S8 for me i could deal with .  and the speakers every year have been pretty bad i really would love dual speakers or similar to iphone/ HTC Boomsound.

 

As its 2017 Small Differences is really the only thing to argue about now most phones are good enough.  Pixel 2 XL seems to fill both my major complaints about the S8+ but with just a bit more bezels. 

[Senzelian]

On 19.10.2017 at 6:32 PM, Kobathor said:

(well, it IS the exact same panel).

Nope, it's not the exact same panel.