Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge
Every major phone launch has a “-gate”: a drama about some problem or worry with the hardware. With the Pixel 4, there are several: the battery may be too small, the face unlock works with your eyes closed, and now the conditions at which the screen will refresh at 90Hz and when it will ratchet down to 60Hz are pretty confusing. Google calls the feature “Smooth Display,” but its reception has been anything but smooth in the past 24 hours.
Google previously said it adjusts the refresh rate depending on what’s happening on the screen to improve battery life, but yesterday some Redditors figured out that refresh rate also drops down to 60Hz if the screen brightness is set below 75 percent. Further investigation from the Android community…