The oleophobic coating on someone’s Pixel 2 XL has already worn off
The Pixel 2 XL has had its fair share of problems that Google is working on fixing, like including two more color profiles in the latest update and promising to fix the audio issues that people have reported. But not everything can be fixed with a software update. We’ve seen devices shipped out without an operating system and now it looks like there’s at least one case of someone receiving a device with a terrible oleophobic coating application.
If you’re not familiar with oleophobic coating, it’s something that manufacturers add to their displays after production in order to help fingerprints wipe away more easily. These coatings wear down over time the more you use your phone and wipe away your fingerprint oil, but this case seems to suggest that the oleophobic coating that was applied to the phone wasn’t done uniformly.
Here’s a peek at the device.
The original poster notes that these smudges completely disappear after applying an alcohol wipe or screen cleaner, but sliding his finger across one of the spots produces the smudges again.
He contacted Google for an RMA of the device and after going through three agents was finally able to return it. That’s good customer support on Google’s part, but here’s to hoping this is an outlier in production similar to some devices shipping without an OS.