Pixel 9a Selfie Previews Are Flickering Like Mad, But There’s An Easy Fix
Rita El Khoury / Android Authority
TL;DR
- The Pixel 9a is exhibiting an odd “flickering” behavior during front-facer previews.
- The camera seem to be unable to decide on exposure settings, and jumps between different brightness levels.
- Despite the jarring preview effect, actual images taken with the phone appear normal.
Google’s latest Pixel phone is here, and new users are starting to get familiar with the Pixel 9a. The company’s latest budget-minded Pixel entry tweaks that familiar design language with a newly flattened-out camera, and based on the poll responses we’ve seen, you’re kind of digging the new look. Today we’re flipping things around to not look at that rear camera package, but check out what’s going on with the phone’s front-facer, as owners of the Pixel 9a start reporting some curious behavior.
Over the past few days, we’ve spotted reports from Reddit users like TheRealFrantik and NebulaRunner_ describing an odd “flickering” effect from the Pixel 9a’s selfie cam. We’ve managed to confirm the phenomenon on our own Pixela 9a handset.
It manifests as a back-and-forth shift that predominantly affects the lower-light areas of the scene, with black suddenly jumping to a lighter shade. It gives the impression of the camera seeming confused over the exposure it’s trying to go for, and dialing up brightness only to immediately change its mind. In the screengrabs you see above, the expected image is on the left, but in preview the Pixel 9a’s camera app keeps flickering to the lighter image on the right.
The good news is that there’s an easy fix: just uninstall recent updates. This behavior appears to have been introduced in a post-launch software update, and by turning back the clock you can enjoy a flicker-free selfie cam.
We’ve also observed that despite this unwanted flickering in the app’s viewfinder, when you go to actually snap a pic the image the Pixel 9a captures appears to be exposed correctly, with the sort of actually dark blacks we expect. That doesn’t make the experience while setting up a shot any less annoying, but at least this is one glitch that appears to be largely without consequence. We’ve also tested with recording front-facing video, and aren’t seeing the flickering there, either. Hopefully we see Google fix this one with an update soon, nevertheless.
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