How to Break an Android Phone with Just One Picture

Recently, several users reported on the internet that their Android phones stopped working after a specific image was displayed on the screen. Fortunately, it was not the hardware components of the phones that malfunctioned, but rather software (some components of the Android operating system).

Google has finally started addressing this issue, as informed by a site that tracks Android software bugs. The problem is that this image is encoded with a color palette from Google/Skia/E3CADAB7BD3DE5E3436874D2A9DEE126, which is available in Google’s Skia graphics library. In Android systems up to version 10, all graphical elements are automatically formatted with the sRGB palette using the following formula: .2126f * r + .7152f * g + .0722f * b, where r, g, and b are the red, green, and blue values ranging from 0 to 255.

This image contains a pixel that, when its RGB values are inserted into the formula, results in the number 256, which is outside the 0-255 range. This is what causes the Android system to crash. If you do not wish to reinstall the Android system, I do not recommend attempting this.