Google Pixel 2 XL: A Visual Catastrophe

[D13H4RD]

1 minute ago, Senzelian said:

Nope, it's not the exact same panel.

Not the exact same.

 

It's similar but it's likely from a different bin.

[Kobathor]

13 minutes ago, Senzelian said:

Nope, it's not the exact same panel.

I would like to find the part number for the different panels, because the LG V30 and Pixel 2 XL's panels have the exact same specs in every single way, even the same manufacturer (duh).

[Sniperfox47]

4 minutes ago, Kobathor said:

I would like to find the part number for the different panels, because the LG V30 and Pixel 2 XL's panels have the exact same specs in every single way, even the same manufacturer (duh).

They're going to have different part numbers because they're cut differently for the corners.

[Kobathor]

5 hours ago, Sniperfox47 said:

They're going to have different part numbers because they're cut differently for the corners.

But they both look like they have the same amount of curve at the corners!

ahhhh!!

[globiboulga]

Just saw one of these in the flesh today and it seems this whole story is blown out of proportion dramatically... There may be something here, but I can't help that the hype is as much designed to get people to madly click around in frenzy than anything else... 

 

It is a very slow tech news period.

[chrisholland03]

Same - I monkeyed around with a 2XL at Verizon today - the angle issue only came into play at extreme angles.  I didn't see any burn in.  Not saying it doesn't exist, just didn't experience it.

 

 

[LAwLz]

12 hours ago, globiboulga said:

Just saw one of these in the flesh today and it seems this whole story is blown out of proportion dramatically... There may be something here, but I can't help that the hype is as much designed to get people to madly click around in frenzy than anything else... 

 

It is a very slow tech news period.

1 hour ago, chrisholland03 said:

Same - I monkeyed around with a 2XL at Verizon today - the angle issue only came into play at extreme angles.  I didn't see any burn in.  Not saying it doesn't exist, just didn't experience it.

 

So what you two are saying is that iVerge might have distorted the truth slightly for clicks and/or other reasons?

You mean the person who posted an article yesterday about how the Pixel 2 XL is such a catastrophe that it is "undermining Google's entire Pixel project", and that they should just stop selling it completely, might be slightly exaggerating things? (Not going to link it because I don't want to give Verge more clicks)

No way! It's almost as if The Verge is a terrible website full of incompetent hacks who doesn't know what they are talking about!

 

Still waiting for some truth-worthy display analysis to come out before making my mind up about this.

[LinusTech]

12 hours ago, globiboulga said:

Just saw one of these in the flesh today and it seems this whole story is blown out of proportion dramatically... There may be something here, but I can't help that the hype is as much designed to get people to madly click around in frenzy than anything else... 

 

It is a very slow tech news period.

It's not a slow news period. There's TONS going on... I don't really get this whole thing..

 

OLED displays on phones have always had purple/green/blue colour shift off-axis..

[D13H4RD]

4 hours ago, LinusTech said:

It's not a slow news period. There's TONS going on... I don't really get this whole thing..

 

OLED displays on phones have always had purple/green/blue colour shift off-axis..

I think it's due to batches.

 

I've seen a few that turned blue when you tilt it slightly off-axis. My Note would turn green when you tilt it off-axis in an extreme manner.

 

Not all 2 XLs are affected though.

[D13H4RD]

If you want my 2 cents on this, here goes.

 

I’ve seen a lot of comments on this where people said that this is some sort of smear campaign by Samsung/Apple and that the blue-shift is caused by the polarization filter. Let me address those first.

 

First of all, no. This is not some smear campaign by Apple or Samsung. Those 2 can’t be bothered to participate as they are already making tons of cash and because the Pixel is not yet in the stage where it can be deemed a threat to the sales dominance of the duo, they wouldn’t be that interested in it anyway. Not to mention Samsung still supplies the display for the standard Pixel 2 and also other components like NAND and RAM. Second of all, the polarization filter doesn’t have much to do with the blue-shift. Color-shift is a thing with OLED panels and given that different batches of the 2 XL shift to blue at a different angle depending on the aforementioned batch, it has got very little to do with the filter. The reason why it shifts blue in my theory has to do with the actual design of the panel. Samsung’s OLED panels have more green pixels (or have larger green pixels) than blue or red. As a result, it shifts to a greenish hue when tilted off-axis. LG’s OLED panels, by contrast, have more blue pixels (or larger ones) than green or red, and as a result, it shifts to a blue-ish hue when tilted off axis.

 

Now, onto my thoughts. Honestly, I feel that this is a quality control issue. I moderate Android Central and I’ve discussed with a couple of Pixel 2 XL owners, some of which got theirs very early while others have just started receiving theirs. What I found was that some of them have very bad displays which shift to blue very quickly and very significantly with other issues like color banding while others have displays which work far closer to what they were intended (color-shifts much later, and color-banding plus burn-in/image-retention were less obvious). This led me to believe that this has much more to do with quality control. LG’s mobile OLED manufacturing has only just recently started back up and they’re not at the refined level where Samsung is at. So it would probably take some time before more good batches roll out.

 

I don’t think the panel itself has any big flaws (aside from the larger size/count of the blue subpixels since they degrade faster than red and green subpixels), but given what I’ve seen and heard from owners so far, it seems to be an issue with quality control and manufacturing, rather than the actual panel.

[LAwLz]

4 hours ago, D13H4RD2L1V3 said:

The reason why it shifts blue in my theory has to do with the actual design of the panel. Samsung’s OLED panels have more green pixels (or have larger green pixels) than blue or red. As a result, it shifts to a greenish hue when tilted off-axis. LG’s OLED panels, by contrast, have more blue pixels (or larger ones) than green or red, and as a result, it shifts to a blue-ish hue when tilted off axis.

Even if it was true that LG's panel had some RBGB subpixel matrix (which I doubt), just having more pixels of a particular color does not mean that's the color you see when viewing from an off angle.

[D13H4RD]

8 hours ago, LAwLz said:

Even if it was true that LG's panel had some RBGB subpixel matrix (which I doubt), just having more pixels of a particular color does not mean that's the color you see when viewing from an off angle.

LG displays do actually use the RB-GB layout. They had that sort of panel on a Mi Note 2 and seems to be the case for their other mobile OLEDs.

 

It’s just a theory, so there’s no actual concrete evidence to back it up.