Not even the wallpapers we can trust anymore. A new "bug" or system failure in Android determines that a simple image used as wallpaper it may be more than enough to crash your phone and keep a beautiful paperweight. A problem that has come to light after Ice Universe - a well-known news leaker - published last week the image that causes the problem on Twitter.
WARNING ！！！
Never set this picture as wallpaper, especially for Samsung mobile phone users!
It will cause your phone to crash!
Don't try it!
If someone sends you this picture, please ignore it. pic.twitter.com/rVbozJdhkL
- Ice universe (@UniverseIce) May 31, 2020
Since then, other specialized media such as 9to5Google and Android Authority have confirmed and verified the existence of this failure, and although Ice Universe says that the bug mainly affects Samsung terminals, it has also been replicated on smartphones from other manufacturers, such as The Google Pixel.
This is how the wallpaper bug works on Android
In sensitive phones experiencing this failure, the fact of setting the aforementioned photo as wallpaper causes the device to start turn the screen on and off intermittently, leaving the mobile completely useless. A problem that is not even solved by hitting the terminal with a good restart.
According to 9to5Google, which has been investigating the problem thoroughly, what we can do is reboot the phone in safe mode, delete the image that we have set as wallpaper and thus solve the problem. Although this repair does not seem to always work, since in the case of Android Authority, they had to erase all data and reset the phone to factory state to return to normal.
On the other hand, this bug in the system does not seem to be universal. According to Android Authority they tried to replicate the failure in a Huawei Mate 20 Pro, but this was not affected. Needless to say, if we have any affection for our mobile, we should completely refrain from testing this failure on our own terminal.
The problem is in the RGB color model
As Dylan Roussel indicates through this thread posted on the 9to5Google Twitter account, the failure could be caused when certain phones are not compatible with the color model used in the image. According to Rousell, this "cursed" image uses the RGB model, which generates conflicts in many Android mobiles that prefer to be governed by the SRGB model.
So, this is happening with a Pixel 3 XL with Android 10, but not on a Pixel 4 XL with Android 11. Here's what's happening: //t.co/mXebJzJZ7Y
- Dylan Roussel (@evowizz) May 31, 2020
Roussel mentions, however, that when he did a test with the Pixel 4 XL running a beta of Android 11 the problem was not reproduced, and it seems that the next version of Android includes code that allows reading the color models not compatible with the SRGB model. In this way, the doors are left open to a relatively simple solution that would help to recover all those mobiles that may be affected by means of a simple update. In fact, as mentioned by XDA-Developers, there is already a developer who has submitted a patch to AOSP (Android Open Source Project) to solve the problem.
The truth is that it is not at all unusual to encounter this type of failure from time to time caused by seemingly innocuous actions. This time it is a simple wallpaper, but we already saw something similar on WhatsApp a couple of years ago with the famous black button that left your mobile locked, or that other 5-second video capable of crashing your iPhone mobile alone with reproducing it.
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