I've seen all kinds of weird bugs on mobile phones over the years. From special characters that made apps unusable to emoji icons that completely bricked devices, the past few years have been extremely weird for iOS and Android users alike. However, a new bug was discovered on Google's software platform, which can have quite serious effects on the phone. A simple picture used as a screen background can make your phone unusable.
How this picture bug manifests itself in Android
It is not clear at this time what the source of the photo is, but one thing is certain: do not try to use it as a wallpaper on Android phones. Especially Samsung phones are affected by this problem, but models from other brands can also be blocked in this way.
The problem manifests itself by blocking the phone and restarting it endlessly. From the moment the photo is set as the screen background, the software becomes unstable. The reason why this happens is the color profile of the photo, which is not compatible with the standard one in Android. Thus, because the operating system does not know how to interpret the colors of the photo, it stops working correctly.
It seems that if the photo is edited and saved with another color profile, such as sRGB, it becomes harmless. But it is important not to download the original photo or use it as wallpaper on Android.
How to "fix" an Android phone affected by this bug
However, if you have already encountered this Android bug and the picture is already set, there is a relatively simple solution to "resurrect" it. It is necessary to access the emergency menu of the phone, accessible by holding the volume down while the phone is turning on. From here you can access booting the phone in "safe mode", which then allows you to change the background to one without any issues. However, this solution is not guaranteed for all devices.
If Safe Mode does not start either, it will be necessary to return to the factory settings. And this option is also available in the emergency menu. Unfortunately, by using this solution, you will lose all your phone content that is not backed up to the cloud. This is about messages, photos, notes and any files downloaded and stored on the phone's internal memory. The contents of the memory card will remain intact.
Curiosity may be high, but we repeat: do not try this at home just to see what happens. At least not on a device you rely on and use every day. However, if you have an Android phone that you don't actively use and don't mind a hard reset, it could be an interesting experiment. It seems that the new Android 11 will avoid this bug. Any photo with unknown color profile will be automatically converted to sRGB format.
Photo doesn't seem to affect devices like the Huawei Mate 20 Pro or OnePlus devices. Probably their proprietary interfaces apply the background at the launcher level, not the operating system level.
(via 9to5mac)