Some Pixel 9 Pro XL phones are having a frustrating touchscreen problem

When you buy a new smartphone, what are you worried about? Will the performance measure up to your expectations? Will this year’s new camera hardware be as impressive as you’ve heard? Will the battery get you through a day of particularly heavy usage? While there are plenty of ways we could end up being a little disappointed, who wonders, “is the touchscreen on my new phone going to work right?” Well, from here on out, that group probably includes a few Pixel 9 Pro XL owners, as reports pile up of touchscreen performance issues.

Over the last couple weeks, a growing number of new Pixel 9 Pro XL owners have been sharing their touchscreen input problems over on Reddit. User Lean_account shares one of the earliest reports, joined by Mx772, and most recently dcdttu, all describing similar issues where the 9 Pro XL fails to properly respond to touch input in the very corners of the display.

Maybe the most frustrating thing about these reports is how inconsistent the behavior they describe seems to be. Sometimes a tap in a corner will register, even if that’s only one in every few attempts. Other times the screen seems to register when you drag your finger through a corner, but ignores single taps. And then there are cases when the corners just won’t register anything at all. Considering that corners like these are often where apps tuck away buttons we need to press (or ads we need to close), this issue has the potentially to be particularly annoying.

This has the smell of a software issue, as a couple comments in these threads report seeing the problem at least temporarily resolved by resetting the Pixel 9 Pro XL — though that’s clearly not a long-term solution.

We’ve reached out to Google to see if the company’s aware of these reports, and to learn if there’s any official advice on how to deal with this behavior. We’ll be sure to update this post with any response.