14 DAY TRIAL // Here’s a bug you don’t see every day: setting a simple picture as the wallpaper on an Android phone can actually break down the device, pushing it to an infinite reboot loop that eventually requires a full restore.
The image was shared on Twitter by mobile leakster Ice Universe, who explained that the wallpaper bug affects Samsung phones. However, it looks like other models could also be bricked too, including here Google Pixels and devices from other brands.
At this point, it all seems to be related to the color profile that the image uses and which Android fails to read correctly, eventually experiencing a fatal crash and causing the device to reboot. It’s not yet clear why some are affected, and others are not, however.
Interestingly enough, the bug isn’t new but has until now remained largely undiscovered.
Bug reported two years ago
A post on Google’s IssueTracker reveals that the problem was first reported in March 2018, but a fix is yet to be released. Google has never acknowledged it, yet given who widespread it has become and how much attention it receives these days, expect a fix any day now.
For the time being, the best recommendation is to just avoid setting this image as your phone wallpaper. Several users have already soft-bricked their phones because they didn’t believe this is possible, so if you really want to give it a try, at least don’t do it on your main phone and certainly not without creating a backup first.
A full factory reset is the only way to recover, it seems, albeit some say they managed to boot into safe mode and then set a different image as wallpaper.
It goes without saying that I haven’t attached the image in this article for obvious reasons, albeit you can see a screenshot of Ice Universe’s tweet, which also includes a thumbnail of the wallpaper.