What's wrong with the screen on the Droid X?

Droid X, the latest smartphone in the top-selling Motorola Droid line, continues to draw plenty of buzz in the smartphone sector. But some Droid X users have been complaining about flickering and dead pixels.

In many ways, Droid X is a success. Verizon, which originally claimed it would be able to keep up with consumer demand, has sold out of Droid X handsets on its online store, and new units aren't expected until next week at the earliest (and early next month at the latest). Meanwhile, dozens of US outlets around the country are reporting depleted Droid stock. All good news for Verizon, which has been able to keep up the Droid X buzz.

But over the past 24 hours, dozens of Droid X owners have come forward and complained about flickering and dead pixels on the Droid X's gigantic HD display. According to the team at the tech blog Electronista, users are returning Droid X handsets to Best Buy. Meanwhile, Verizon call center employees "know of the issue and are informing users they have 30 days to exchange their handsets for any reason," Electronista reports.

Sound familiar? We thought so, too. When the Apple iPhone 4 launched a few weeks back, people complained about the reception – an issue that was eventually attributed to so-called "death grip." But they also complained about some sort of display malfunction. Gizmodo even ran a gallery of user-submitted photographs that appeared to show a yellow blotch under the iPhone's screen glass.

The blotchy screen complaints eventually subsided – or perhaps they were drowned out by complaints about the death grip – and Apple was free to go on selling phones. Something similar will probably happen with the Droid X, which by all indications is a strong phone, and a popular one.

Of course, the smartphone market is a rough place, and even as some companies see their stars rise, others have been hit with disappointment. As we reported yesterday, Google has definitively shut the door on future US sales of the Nexus One, a smartphone that was originally hailed as an iPhone-killer. Google says customer support for existing Nexus One owners would remain in place.

Nexus One sales remained sluggish through 2010, and even a move to bring the phone to brick-and-mortar retail outlets didn't seem to help much.

Related:

iPhone 4 vs. Droid X: How do they compare?

Motorola Droid X review roundup