Google says it’ll fix the ghostly screen flickering that some users have reported seeing when pressing the Pixel 6 Pro’s power button while the phone is completely powered down (via Android Central). From most reports, the flickers don’t happen when just the screen is off, like it would be if the phone was sleeping, though at least one person says that it’s happened while the phone was on and in use. Google describes the issue as occurring when the power button is pushed “with slight pressure but not enough to turn [the Pixel 6 Pro] on.”
In a support document for the issue, Google says the fix is coming in a December software update and that you can avoid it by not pressing the power button when the phone’s powered down. While that could be read as a bit of a “you’re holding it wrong” instruction, it’s a bit hard to imagine why you’d need to repeatedly press the power button while the phone’s off.
Google specifically says in its support document that the issue doesn’t mean the phone has a hardware flaw. That’s good news because previous Google phones, like the Pixel 2 XL, had weird screen issues throughout their entire lives — that shouldn’t be the case with the 6 Pro if the issue is fixable in software. While it’s not likely that most owners would’ve run into the “transient display artifacts,” as Google puts it, it’s still nice to see that it’s getting fixed and should help those who use their phone’s buttons as fidget toys to have a less annoying experience.
