Landscape photography, of a beautiful lake against a cloudy sky, disables Samsung and Pixel devices as soon as you set it as wallpaper • Our recommendation: Don't do it, but if you already have - save your device
Photo: Yinon Ben Shoshan
A strange bug that was discovered this past weekend causes an innocent-looking wallpaper image to disable Android-based smartphone devices.
You will not find anything suspicious in the content of the image - another routine landscape shot with a beautiful lake, sky and trees - but in the video posted on 9to5google you can see that once this image is set as wallpaper on the home screen the phone goes off, turns it back on and off again. You can't access menus or open apps and the device is actually disabled.
"It's not a joke, please don't try it," warns the IceUniverse Twitter account that specializes in mobile news, revealing the glitch.
According to user reports, the image hits Samsung smartphones and Google's "Pixel" devices, but it could also damage other companies' devices.
The source of the malfunction is probably the color of the problematic image, which is not supported by all the latest smartphones. They are unable to process the image, and display it properly, and simply courses. In the meantime, the image is probably intended for 5K resolution screens, which probably makes it difficult for non-supporting devices to process it.
To resolve the malfunction, turn off the smartphone, turn it on in Safe Mode, and delete the image. On some devices, the device will need to be reset to factory reset (factory reset), which means losing all information stored on a smartphone. So really - don't try it at home.
