The Pixel 2 XL has had a checkered past. Since its debut, the handset has faltered in many ways, becoming one of the more problematic devices that Google has ever produced. More recently, big names in the tech community have been chiming in, stating that their Pixel 2 XL handsets have been running slow. Slow down isn"t all that uncommon for Android smartphones, but the issue here is actually quite severe.
If you haven"t been following the story, it started towards the end of July when Artem Russakovskii of Android Police tweeted that his Pixel 2 XL has been running super slow, regardless if it was running on Android Oreo or Android Pie. He followed up roughly a couple weeks later, showing a clip of how long it takes for the camera to initialize as an example of the problem, and also explained that this behavior wasn"t isolated to just the camera and also affected other aspects of the phone. In the meantime, he would begin using a new Pixel 2 XL, while engineers from Google would be taking a look at the problematic smartphone.
Anonymous tip: Google has at this point identified three possible causes of @ArtemR"s (and others) Pixel 2 XL lag issues, one of which would require hardware replacements.
— Stephen Hall (@hallstephenj) August 16, 2018
The engineers came, spent two hours inspecting the device, and left with the data to further analyze. While there hasn"t been official word of what is causing the issue, an anonymous tip was left with Stephen Hall, who is the managing editor of 9to5Google, stating that Google has determined that three things that could be causing the lag issue, with one of those issues being a hardware problem. If there is a hardware problem, this could become an even bigger issue for Google, who will most likely need to replace hardware that is affected.
While we will need to wait for confirmation, hopefully, the Pixel 2 XL, which is produced by LG, won"t be having more serious issues in the future, similar to its older handsets.
Source: Artem Russakovskii (Twitter), Stephen Hall (Twitter)