Google took to the official Pixel owners forums last night to address the numerous complaints that have been popping up about the Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL. Most of these center around the uncompetitive LG-made OLED display that was fitted to the Pixel 2 XL (and not the Pixel 2), but there have also been complaints about strange ticks coming from the speakers of both models. The end result of the complaints (and news articles) is that every Pixel 2 and 2 XL will come with a two-year warranty, and Google will push out some software updates to alleviate some of the other Pixel problems.

The display is grainy or "dirty" looking at low brightness.

It experiences image burn-in after just a few weeks.

There's a blue shift to the display when looked at off-angle.

The colors are "dull." (This one is more of a personal preference.)

LG is far behind Samsung when it comes to producing quality OLED panels for smartphones, but for some reason Google still chose to slap an inferior component onto its flagship smartphone. Here are the most common complaints we've seen out there as a result:

Mario Queiroz, Google Hardware's VP of product management, said on the Pixel forums that while he thinks the Pixel 2 XL display is "beautiful," Google is taking some steps to address some of these issues.

For the display burn-in, Queiroz says Google's investigation found that "the Pixel 2 XL display shows that its decay characteristics are similar to OLED panels used in comparable products" and that "the differential aging is in line with that of other premium smartphones and should not affect the normal, day-to-day user experience of the Pixel 2 XL."

Regardless of how quickly the Pixel 2 XL display gets image burn-in, the Android 8.1 Developer Preview takes some steps to mitigate burn-in in the bottom navigation bar. The buttons now dim after about two seconds, and the bar turns white on some screens, like the system settings. The Android navigation bar is nearly always on the screen and was the primary item shown in the early burn-in reports. Android 8.1 won't come to Pixel 2 owners until its final release in December.

In a follow-up post to the announcement, Seang Chau, a VP of engineering at Google, revealed that a coming update would "reduce the maximum brightness of the Pixel 2 XL by a virtually imperceptible 50 cd/m2 (nits), thereby significantly reducing load on the screen with an almost undetectable change in the observed brightness."

Dull colors or consumer preference?

Claims that the colors of the Pixel 2 XL display are "dull" is an interesting situation. Samsung has been shipping wildly oversaturated OLED displays for years, and it seems like some consumers have grown accustomed to the super bright colors. Another contributor is that Android 8.0 Oreo is the first time Android has ever supported color management out of the box, which has repercussions in the way most of Android handles colors.

Before Oreo, Android was not aware of color space at all, and when it needed to draw the color "red," it just picked whatever its maximum red value was. Chau explained in his post that "For JPEG or PNGs encoded in sRGB and with an LCD display typically calibrated to sRGB, color management wasn’t a pressing problem." With the rise of OLED panels, displays now have a wider color gamut, so that "red" that Android called on earlier is now a super saturated, eyeball-searing red. Before color management, Android would "stretch" the sRGB color profile to whatever its maximum color values were, which resulted in everything being more saturated. Different max color values on different displays means that any image looks different on every single Android phone.

As a side effect of Oreo's color management support, the sRGB color stretching doesn't happen on an OLED display anymore, so all the super saturated colors are gone. Google tried to address this at launch with a "vivid colors" checkbox in the display settings, which is a 10 percent saturation boost. This apparently wasn't enough for some users, though, and Chau said that in the future, a new "saturated" mode will be added to the Pixel 2 and 2 XL. Chau says this checkbox "puts the display into an unmanaged configuration, similar to how the Pixel 1 operates. The colors will be more saturated and vibrant, but less accurate."

The blue tint shift and graininess received the least satisfactory response. Chau mentioned that "the slight blue tint is inherent in the display hardware and only visible when you hold the screen at a sharp angle. All displays are susceptible to some level of color shift." But this doesn't address the fact that the Pixel 2 XL display has this more than other displays. I also wouldn't describe the shift as "a sharp angle" but actually 10 or so degrees off of perpendicular. As for the graininess, well, nothing was said about that. That's just a quality of LG panels people will have to deal with.

As for the audio issues we reported on earlier, that finally got an official response, too. "Orrin," a community manager on the Pixel User forums, said, "We are validating a software update to address faint clicking sounds on some Pixel 2 devices. The update will be made available in the coming weeks. The clicking noise being reported does not affect the performance of your device but if you find it bothersome you can temporarily turn off NFC in Settings > Connected devices > NFC."