A bug in Android means setting a certain picture as a wallpaper for your phone could be enough to crash it. The issue gained widespread attention over the weekend after a user, leaker Ice Universe tweeted the image causing the issue, and 9to5Google and Android Authority have since verified the bug. Ice Universe says the bug especially affects Samsung handsets, but it’s also repeated on Google Pixel phones, among others.
On affected phones, setting the picture as your wallpaper causes a handset ‘s screen to automatically start turning on and off, making it unusable. Rebooting a phone won’t solve the problem. 9to5Google notes that it is possible to restart your phone in safe mode and uninstall the image file as a potential workaround, but Android Authority says it ultimately had to reset the computer to normalize things. Just enough to suggest you should certainly not seek to duplicate this problem on any of your important apps.
The bug doesn’t seem universal; Android Authority says it initially attempted to check the bug on a Huawei Mate 20 Pro but finds the phone doesn’t seem to be affected.
A 9to5 Google contributor, Dylan Roussel posted a Twitter thread saying that the problem could be caused when certain phones do not support the image’s color space. The picture uses the RGB color space, according to Roussel, while many Android phones prefer SRGB.
Crashing phones isn’t unusual because of seemingly innocuous content. A bug was found in iOS 13 earlier this year that caused iPhones to crash while viewing such Sindhi-speaking characters. There was also a five-second video a couple of years ago that might cause the iPhones to crash. You will generally exercise some caution on what photos you use as wallpapers on Android before a patch is widespread.
