SAN FRANCISCO, June 3 — Over the past few days, an image of a landscape has been circulating on the web that, when set as a wallpaper on an Android phone, causes devices to crash.
Recently various media have been reporting on an image that causes Android devices to crash when it's set as a wallpaper. So what exactly is this image, where did it come from and why does it brick Androids?
While the origin of this seemingly innocuous landscape image hasn't been identified, the notable tech leaker Ice Universe was among the first to publicly share the image with a warning explaining what setting this photo as a wallpaper could do to a phone, particularly Samsung devices.
WARNING！！！
— Ice universe (@UniverseIce) May 31, 2020
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
Essentially, Android phones with this image as a wallpaper will crash and then be stuck in a loop of the lockscreen being activated and deactivated. Evidently, this is caused by the colors in the image, as altering them a small amount prevents devices from being bricked.
After digging into getHistogram for both devices, and the functions calling getHistogram... I noticed this.
— Dylan Roussel (@evowizz) May 31, 2020
The first image is from the Pixel 3 XL, while the second is from the Pixel 4 XL.
On the Pixel 4 XL, there's a new parameter for the function peekWallpaperBitmap. pic.twitter.com/gKaRz8fUEv
Thankfully, setting the images as a wallpaper won't permanently brick a phone. In most cases, devices can be fixed by simply deleting the file or resetting the phone. — AFP-Relaxnews
