Beware: This image can crash your Android phone when set as wallpaper

Over the past few days, an image of a landscape has been circulating on the web that, when set as a wallpaper on an Android phone, causes devices to crash.

Recently various media have been reporting on an image that causes Android devices to crash when it’s set as a wallpaper. So what exactly is this image, where did it come from and why does it brick Androids?

While the origin of this seemingly innocuous landscape image hasn’t been identified, the notable tech leaker Ice Universe was among the first to publicly share the image with a warning explaining what setting this photo as a wallpaper could do to a phone, particularly Samsung devices.

WARNING！！！
Never set this picture as wallpaper, especially for Samsung mobile phone users!
It will cause your phone to crash!
Don't try it!
If someone sends you this picture, please ignore it. pic.twitter.com/rVbozJdhkL

— ICE UNIVERSE (@UniverseIce) May 31, 2020

Essentially, Android phones with this image as a wallpaper will crash and then be stuck in a loop of the lockscreen being activated and deactivated.

This is caused by the colours in the image, as altering them a small amount prevents devices from being bricked.

I won't show everything, but basically, the function doColorManagement of the ColorManagementProxy is called at some point. This function checks if the Color Space of the image is supported by the device. The image is supported by default if its color space is SRGB, or… pic.twitter.com/1Ga8DBTEEY

— Dylan Roussel (@evowizz) May 31, 2020

Thankfully, setting the images as a wallpaper won’t permanently brick a phone. In most cases, devices can be fixed by simply deleting the file or resetting the phone.

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