Android phones can be crashed using simple wallpaper
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#^Android wallpaper warningPlease be careful if tempted to download and install third-party wallpapers for your Android phones. A “deficiency†in Android versions less than 11 (not yet even dated for release) means that JPEG files encoded in plain RGB colour space rather than the sRGB used by Android
may cause repeated unwanted behaviour including repeated reboots preventing use of the device.
Technically neither a bug nor a hack this hasn’t stopped some n’ere-do-wells deliberately spreading and even selling RGB encoded JPEG files designed and offered as Android wallpaper in order to cause mischief. Presumably, once the “damage†is done you will be contacted to ask for a fee for the recovery instructions.
Nothing discussed here prevents you from using photos taken with your own phone nor JPEG files created by almost all digital cameras or photo editing software (unless specificallly set (I have no idea why anyone would want to) to use the plain RGB colour space.If you do manage to get affected, the symptoms are pretty obvious – your phone will crash and reboot continuously.
The answer is simple (though a right pain to do):
- (a) boot the phone in recover mode,
- (b) remove the wallpaper (the phone will automatically revert to one of its safe defaults for now),
- (c) reboot the phone normally.
You will find instructions on booting different phones into recovery mode with a simple on-line search. Search for your phone make, model and the word “recoveryâ€.
In extreme cases (eg; if you aren’t able to get to recovery mode) you may have to factory reset your device losing all data held on the phones (at which point I feel compelled to ask “hands up everyone who doesn’t back up their phone contents regularly?â€) and reinstall from scratch. Your installed apps should reappear as soon as you re-enter your Google credentials but you will need login details for services such as email, cloud file storage, password managers and similar apps that you use.
All in all, better not to install someone else’s pretty pictures without checking.
For those who really want an offered wallpaper image, download it first to a laptop or desktop computer (ie; a device that is NOT running Android) and open it in a photo editor – even the simplest ones will usually provide image information including the colour space used. If you find plain RGB in use your choices are to ignore the file or convert the colour space (most image editing software has such a function) to sRGB then save the file with a new file name before loading it on your phone.