14 DAY TRIAL //
iOS is suffering from a new issue impacting the majority of iPhones out there, causing the Messages app to crash completely with no easy workaround.
Specifically, a video posted on YouTube channel vincedes3, and which you can watch in full at the end of the article, reveals that sending a large contact card via the Messages app (typically to iMessage contacts) causes it to freeze and then crash every time the user reattempts to open it.
According to this video, the bug affects any device running iOS 9 up to the latest betas of iOS 10.2.1, so the majority of iPhones out there are suffering from this issue.
We’ve already tried this on our iPhones and we can confirm that the glitch is indeed real and there’s no easy workaround to cope with it. The bug happens when a contact sends a malicious contact file that’s too large for the Messages app to read it correctly, causing it to freeze and then crash.
Once tapping the contact card, the Messages app goes back to the home screen and when reattempting to launch the app, it freezes before it crashes once again.
Don’t hold your breath for a patch from Apple
The easiest way to deal with this problem is to not open any contact card coming from people you don’t know or you don’t trust. In case you do receive this contact card, you shouldn’t open it by any means, and you can delete the conversation if you notice any slowdown because of it.
By the looks of things, Apple needs to ship a patch as soon as possible, although judging from how fast the company usually reacts to this kind of bugs, it’s hard to expect an out-of-band patch before a new iOS update sees daylight. The next iOS 10.2.1 beta could include a fix, but it’s not clear when stable users could get it as well.
For the moment, it’s very clear that this is a major bug that could severely impact iPhone and Messages app performance, so just don’t tap on any contact cards that look suspicious.
