Some Pixel6 phones reportedly have a strange screen flaw

Some Pixel6 phones reportedly have a strange screen flaw

Update: Nov. 1, 11:40 a.m. - We have obtained an image of what appears to be a Pixel 6 display affected by the punch hole issue. You can see them below.

Now that the Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro are starting to get into the hands of buyers, we are hearing of several issues that we did not experience with our review units.

In particular, these issues relate to the Pixel's display. Currently, these reports are coming from a few users, but that number could increase.

Some users have reported that the Pixel 6 display has strange flickering, a greenish tint, or oddly enough, a second hole. The flickering occurred with one user on Reddit (vis GSMArena), who reported that when he pressed the power button when the Pixel 6 Pro was off, the screen would flicker erratically.

Others have reported seeing a greenish tint on the Pixel 6 display, which is not uncommon with OLED displays. In fact, previous Pixels like the Pixel 4 XL and Pixel 5a have also experienced this issue. It is sad to see flagships with this problem, as the tint severely detracts from an otherwise not bad screen.

The last reported issue is by far the strangest: the Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro have a hole cutout in the center for the front-facing camera. The display and OS are positioned around this, out of the way, but one user released a video of a second hole-punch cutout.

This new cut overlaps the regular cut. This appears to be a double hole punch display, and appears to be a manufacturing fluke.

A second image sent in by a Tom's Guide reader seems to show the same problem. However, the additional hole in their Pixel 6 was located above the corner of the display. While this is different from the previous example, it adds more weight to the suspicion that Google's quality control may not be up to snuff.

I want to clarify that neither my Tom's Guide colleague Philip Michaels nor I experienced these problems with the review unit. In fact, the Pixel 6 Pro is my new favorite Android phone, despite its shortcomings.

That said, Google has never been good at quality control for the Pixel. That doesn't seem to be changing this year, and I can only hope that problems like the Pixel 2 XL's display issues don't become more prevalent.

Manufacturing defects are inevitable, but the mark of good quality control is rejecting defective devices and not having them delivered to customers. It seems that Google still needs help in this aspect of manufacturing hardware.

Today, October 28, is the official launch date of the Pixel 6 series, so we may see new or additional defect reports in the coming days and weeks.

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