Google Pixels have usually had very good displays in most aspects. High resolutions and sharp pixel density, excellent HDR support, 2700 nits of peak brightness, and efficient AOD. The panels also have very color-accurate OLED, and Pixels are generally regarded as among the best displays.
However, one issue stops them from being above Chinese smartphone companies. Phones from Oppo, OnePlus, Vivo, etc use similar technology that makes the brightness and colors as efficient as the Pixel, while also offering multiple eye protection features.
This is known as DC Dimming, and that’s a key eye protection feature. Both the Pixel 9 Pro and Pixel 9 have 240Hz of PWM. There are two ways to handle OLED pixels. In the conventional way, using regular PWM dimming, the pixels rapidly switch on and off. For a specific group of people who are sensitive to PWM, it may cause problems like eye strain, headaches, and more.
In general, it’s not healthy for a regular person as well, especially in low-light situations, where the brightness of the phone drops by a lot. To counter this issue, companies use DC Dimming technology. Instead of directly powering the pixels on and off, DC Dimming adjusts the power supply instead, and this doesn’t cause eye strain or headaches.
As per Android Central, the Pixel 10 series could finally get this major display upgrade. For the record, Samsung doesn’t pay attention to eye health either- both Google and Samsung never gave a valid reply after “We’ll look into this.” However, recently, a Google representative indicated that the teams are working on it and investigating it. The source claims that the company will try and handle this later this year.
There’s a reason that companies use PWM Dimming. It gives merits in synthetic display quality tests, and this improves brightness and color accuracy. However, we can achieve similar results with DC dimming as well. 240Hz and 480Hz are simply not good enough or safe anymore, and it’s good to see that Google might take a step in the right direction regarding this.
The company didn’t exactly confirm that it’s coming for the Pixel 10 series. However, “later this year” indicates that, since that’s the only smartphone series from Google this year.
In other news, the Pixel 10 gets an 11MP telephoto camera, and Google has made the main and ultrawide cameras smaller. The camera hardware of the Pixel 10 Pro remains the same. Google is also going to use the new Tensor G5 chipset for these two phones. We can expect the phones to get announced around August 2025, at a Google event.
