5 Reasons Why You Shouldn’t Buy the Pixel 2 XL

Screen Burn-In Concerns

This next slide is technically part of the first one, but it deserves its own special attention. Every OLED screen suffers from something known as "burn-in". This is where the pixels burn (or degrade) over time and show things they shouldn't. 

The on-screen home, back, and recent app buttons on the Pixel 2 XL are always on the bottom of the screen. After a few years, those might "burn-in" and never go away. Then when you watch a movie on fullscreen you'll see those buttons when you shouldn't. They're permanently burned into the display. A similar problem is "ghosting" where icons like the time, date and WiFi icon at the top of the screen are visible when they shouldn't be. Ghosting goes away after a few seconds, burn-in is forever. 

In our photo above, Alex from Android Central noticed burn-in on the Pixel 2 XL after just one week. This should NOT happen that fast. Maybe he has a bad screen and others won't experience this for 2 years, or maybe Google has a bigger problem with these screens. We're not sure. Maybe it's just ghosting and not a problem at all. 

What we do know, is that Google already shared a statement about this. According to Google this might happen but isn't visible to daily users unless they're actively looking for it. Meaning if you open a perfectly gray image at fullscreen just to try and see the burn-in. Everyone else using the phone normally will never see it. 

We're not sure how serious the burn-in problem is yet, simply because these phones are relatively new. We recommend waiting another 3-4 weeks to see if more reports surface. If not, then you'll probably be fine buying the Pixel 2 XL. For now, don't risk it. This phone is $850.