Android Users Beware! Setting This Gorgeous Image as The Wallpaper Will Render Your Phone Useless

You must have heard it many times before, of instances where malicious text messages and shared files can be used to cause smartphones to reboot or cause system crashes. Android smartphone users should be a bit more worried because now, it seems that an innocuous-looking image has the ability to soft-brick your Android phone if you set it up as the wallpaper. From what we understand so far, this is particularly potent on many Samsung Galaxy smartphones. The exact reason for the wallpaper-led crash isn't clear and Google has not released a statement yet.

The flaw was first flagged by a leaker named Ice Universe who said in a tweet that this wallpaper is causing some smartphones to crash or soft-brick. So, what exactly is soft-bricking? This happens when your phone can't be used in way or rendered useless, till the time you reset the device completely. Strangely, this simple, idyllic image is actually leading some Android phones to crash and then go into this condition called "soft-bricked" when the image is set up as a wallpaper. After being used as a wallpaper, the device crashes and the bug causes the display to switch on and off while on the lock screen.

Although this doesn't affect all Android devices and OnePlus as well as Huawei smartphones were found to be immune of these issues while setting up this image as wallpaper. Having said that, some users pointed out that the issue was present on Google Pixel 3 XL running on Android 10. However, it was not there on the Pixel 4 XL running on Android 11. Whatever the hardware and software combination you have on hand, it is highly recommended you don't use this image as your wallpaper.

We’ll update this article when Google comes up with a response or if any further insight is revealed on the topic. Until then, you would definitely be going to want to avoid this image, let alone setting it up as your mobile wallpaper.