Summary
Pixel phone owners love it when Google releases one of its feature-drop updates, enabling new features and fixing bugs on their phones. But if you haven’t updated to the latest one yet, it might be a good idea to wait a few days.
The latestMarch Pixel dropoffers a lot, including new scam message detection, improvements to Find My, and other goodies, but it’s not all good news. Unfortunately, countless Pixel owners with phones from the Pixel 6 to the latest Pixel 9 are experiencing odd problems. Some of those include a frustrating screen brightness issue where the display constantly dims, haptic vibration motor changes, and other bugs.
The main issue so far is funky screen brightness and dimming on Pixel phones. Peopleall over Redditarereportingthat their Pixel phones will randomlydim the screen, as often as every 10–20 seconds, constantly adjusting the brightness to random and unnecessary levels. It’s happening the most during video playback, but that’s not the only time users are experiencing it.
Several other users mentioned that background wallpapers seem very dim compared to before the update or thatwhile browsing Google Photos, the brightness level drops to very dim and then bounces back to the set level.
And while we’ve yet to hear from Google about the problem, there’s a good chance a quick maintenance update could arrive in the coming days or weeks to fix these issues. For now, many owners claim it has something to do with the 120Hz display and Google’s Smooth Motion setting. You can try going intoSettings > Display & Touch > and toggling off “Smooth Display,“which fixed the problem for some. Or, set the phone to 60Hz.
Remember that this is likely a bug affecting some owners and not a new hardware problem with your device. Still, it’s a good idea to stay up to date on the situation, and hopefully, Google will patch it with another update soon.
Unfortunately, that’s not the only issue worth mentioning. We’re seeing a few complaints that phones are charging beyond the 80% limit set by owners topreserve battery health. However, that’s likely due to theMarch update recalibrating the battery stats, which is actually a good thing. The phones will recalibrate the 100% level, then continue charging to 80% once that process is completed.
Finally, the other Pixel March problem is with phones' haptic (vibration) motors. Google made no mention of haptics in the release notes for the March update, but users all over Reddit are noticing the phone vibration is significantly different from before. Some enjoy the change, while others feel like typing feels weird as the haptic motor fires after each button tap.
The haptic change is likely permanent and not a bug, but you can at least change things up in Settings if it bothers you. Open your Pixel settings menu, then navigate to “Accessibility” and “Vibrations & Feedback,” and adjust or turn them off as necessary.
While these are all frustrating little situations, we’ve yet to hear about anything major messing up after the Pixel March release. Google releases these Pixel drops every few months, but hopefully, a bug-fixing release comes sooner rather than later. In the meantime, the company isbusy working on Android 16, and it’ll be here before you know it.
