360Photography

The Google Pixel 2 might sport one of the best smartphone cameras around, but when it comes to the display—particularly on the larger XL—model, Google has had nothing but trouble. Reports of everything from burn-in, to blue tint off-axis, to ‘dull’ colors have left the tech giant playing catch up, and today it finally … well… caught up. Or at least it tried.

A promised software update released on Tuesday (and rolling out to all users by the end of the week) addresses the issue of burn-in with some minor tweaks, and adds three total color saturation modes under the phone’s Display settings to hopefully quiet down the complaints about ‘dull’ colors.

Here’s a quick summary of the update in Google’s own words:

This update includes some of the enhancements we posted about on October 26, such as the new Saturated color mode for Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL, a fix for the faint clicking noise heard in some Pixel 2s, and other bug and security updates. As we mentioned in our deeper dive, this update also brings planned UI changes which extend the life of the OLED display, including a fade out of the navigation buttons at the bottom of the screen and an update to maximum brightness.

According to Android Central, the updated saturation settings come in three flavors: Natural, Boosted, and Saturated. Natural should provide the most accurate color reproduction; Boosted takes the place of the “Vivid Colors” setting previously available, which boosted saturation by 10%; and, finally, Saturated will put the display in an “unmanaged configuration” that will make colors “more saturated and vibrant, but less accurate,” according to Google’s deep dive on the topic.

Unfortunately, this mode throws away one of the most important things about Android Oreo: color management. In ‘Saturated’ mode, all apps, images and video will first render to sRGB (for now) and then be stretched to the display’s wider color gamut.

This will make for inaccurate colors across the two devices, but there is hope for us color nerds. As Seang Chau, VP of Engineering at Google, says in his blog post: due to color management under the hood in the new OS, “an Android app developer can now make use of the wider Display P3 color gamut precisely for a wider range of colors. Google apps will take advantage of wide colors in the future.” We’re hoping this means that future apps will render either to P3 or straight to a display profile provided by Google, which would allow for saturated colors when appropriate, but not at the cost of accuracy.

Finally, no comment was made on the poor viewing angle of the XL model that introduces a strong blue-tint off-axis (see picture above of the Pixel 2 XL vs the original XL). This can make photos with warmer tones look even more desaturated by shifting toward blue. But while Google was able to address some of its display complaints this week, this seems like a hardware problem that will be difficult to fix via software.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)