This photo caused phones to crash

PHOTO: GAURAV AGRAWAL/FLICKR

This photo of a beautiful sunset at St Mary Lake in Glacier National Park, in the US state of Montana, belies an unfortunate incident.

A cellphone glitch meant that when the image was set as a wallpaper, it caused some Android phones to fail, the BBC reported. The handsets would switch on and off repeatedly, requiring a factory reset which meant all data on them would be wiped out.

This was not known to the scientist and amateur photographer Gaurav Agrawal, who snapped the photo in August last year and shared it on Flickr, a photo platform.

Earlier this month, Mr Agrawal was surprised when he suddenly started seeing his photo popping up on the news. He was unaware of the glitch because he owns an iPhone and his wallpaper is always a photo of his wife, he told the BBC.

Experts from security firm Pen Test Partners told the BBC that phones need to check what the image "colour space" is, to work out how to display it properly.

However, some phones crash because they do not know how to deal with it correctly, and the software developers probably had not considered this might happen.

Mr Agrawal said: "I hoped my photograph would have gone 'viral' for a good reason, but maybe that's for another time.

"I'm going to use another format from now on."

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A version of this article appeared in the print edition of The Straits Times on June 16, 2020, with the headline This photo caused phones to crash. Subscribe