How This Wallpaper Can Kill Your Android Smartphone

A few days ago, A renowned leakster who goes by the name of ‘Ice Universe’ over Twitter shared an Image file and warned all his audience not to use the prescribed image as wallpaper for their Android devices especially, The devices delivered by Samsung and Google. But as far as human behavior goes a bunch of his followers tried using the image as their wallpapers and most of them ended up regretting the decision because they soft-bricked their beloved smartphones while some of them were seen flaunting the same wallpaper on their devices. This soft-brick phenomenon was primarily seen on devices from the house of Samsung and Google.

If you are new to the dark side of Android you must be wondering What is Soft-Brick? Soft-Brick is a term used to define the state of an Android device where it shows some sign of life but can’t boot-up correctly or freezes on boot-logo during the process also referred to as Boot-Loop. This issue may arise when there is some software side issue on your device usually observed in the case of Android-Upgrade, Installing Camera Mods, or while installing a custom ROM. At this point of time, you must be wondering if this whole soft-brick situation arises due to some software problems then how can a wallpaper lead to this blunder. Let’s boot into the explanation. 

What Is Color Space?

To get a better picture of the root cause of this problem, you must know What is ‘Color Space’?

Color Space can be considered as a set of colors, usually derived from primary color gamut  i.e. Red, Green, and Blue (referred to as RGB for short). Color space defines the gamut in which you will see the output on your monitor screen or paper.

You may have witnessed a scenario in which you saw some vibrant image on your computer screen and tried printing it on a sheet of paper. But as you hold the print in your hand, all the excitement woes away because the image is not as vibrant and playful as you were expecting.

This problem arises due to the variation in color space defined by the monitor and the color space defined by your printing device.

Types Of Color Space

Some popular Color Spaces are as follows:

For Photography

• sRGB
• Adobe RGB
• ProPhoto RGB

For Videography

• DCI P3
• Rec 709

That’s the point where the problem arises. Android devices make use of sRGB color space to display and decode images no matter the original color space of input image, it converts the image into sRGB image for the sake of efficiency and performance. For instance, If you feed-up and image whose color space is designed to be Adobe RGB and try to see the image on your Android Smartphone. Android OS itself converts the color space to less vibrant sRGB. The same goes for ProPhoto RGB images.

Then What’s The Problem

The problem lies within the conversion process itself. The conversion from any other format to sRGB format is done using a formula derived on the basis of ‘Pixel Luminacance’. Pixel Luminance is defined on the intensity of light while refactoring the value hex-values of color palette depending upon the mode of conversion. The formula is designed by keeping in mind that humans consume green color more dynamically as compared to Blue and Red,

The formula stands as “0.2126 * Red + 0.7152 * Green + 0.0722 * Blue” after adding up all these values the sum must be less than equal to 255.

But there is one pixel in the image whose evaluated value turns out to be more than 255 and hence the Android operating system can’t manipulate that one pixel which in turn creates a loop of error when you use the image as wallpaper of your Android Smartphone and therefore your device keeps rebooting until you hard-reset the smartphone.

Solution

Even though we don’t encourage you guys to use the mentioned image as home screen or lock screen for your Android Smartphone but if you dare to do so we are not responsible for any damage or regret followed by your decision.

If you really want to use the image as your wallpaper, you can follow the methods prescribed below to safely implicate the image as home screen or lock screen wallpaper for your device.

• Use your computer or laptop to change the color space of the image.
• Upload the image on any of the social media platforms (We prefer Weibo or Twitter) and download the image from there. This method will convert the space all by itself.
• Take a screenshot of the image and use the screenshot instead of the original image.

That’s how a single pixel can kill your beloved smartphone After all the bustle around this flaw in the most loved operating system around the world, developers have taken charge to solve the problem with the upcoming Android 11 update. You can follow us on social media platforms to get the latest updates with the speed of light or you can download our app from Google Play Store.