14 DAY TRIAL // Apple has confirmed the character bug that could crash your iPhone, iPad, or even your Apple Watch or Mac, and said that it would release a small update to fix it before the major iOS 11.3 release.
A nasty bug was recently unearthed in Apple's iOS mobile operating systems in the form of an Indian (Telugu) character that could crash any iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, or Mac, if it was sent via Message, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, or even Mail.
During our tests, here at Softpedia, we even discovered that the bug could crash an Apple Watch too, causing the smartwatch to enter an infinite reboot loop when the respective character was received. Recovering from the crash is not an easy task either.
Apple says it will fix the issue before releasing iOS 11.3
The Verge now reports that Apple told them it's aware of the character bug in the iOS operating system and plans to release interim software update as soon as possible to fix the issue. The update would be released before iOS 11.3.
The bug isn't present in the latest beta of Apple's upcoming iOS 11.3 operating systems, which means that Apple's engineers won't have a hard time to port it to a point release of the iOS 11.2.x operating system series.
We highly recommend that you update your iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch devices to the latest iOS software version as soon as it's out. As expected, Apple didn't say when exactly it will release the interim update with the fix, but it shouldn't be long now.
Meanwhile, stay away from messages coming from people you don't know as they might contain that nasty iPhone-crashing character, and it would be a pity to spend all day recovering your device instead of concentrating on what's important.