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Android Oreo Bug Sends Thousands of Phones Into Infinite Boot Loops (bleepingcomputer.com)
An anonymous reader writes: A bug in the new "Adaptive Icons" feature introduced in Android Oreo has sent thousands of phones into infinite boot loops, forcing some users to reset their devices to factory settings, causing users to lose data along the way. The bug was discovered by Jcbsera, the developer of the Swipe for Facebook Android app (energy-efficient Facebook wrapper app), and does not affect Android Oreo (8.0) in its default state. The bug occurs only with apps that use adaptive icons -- a new feature introduced in Android Oreo that allows icons to change shape and size based on the device they're viewed on, or the type of launcher the user is using on his Android device. For example, adaptive icons will appear in square, rounded, or circle containers depending on the theme or launcher the user is using. The style of adaptive icons is defined a local XML file. The bug first manifested itself when the developer of the Swipe for Facebook Android app accidentally renamed the foreground image of his adaptive icon with the same name as this XML file (ic_launcher_main.png and ic_launcher_main.xml). This naming scheme sends Android Oreo in an infinite loop that regularly crashes the device. At one point, Android detects something is wrong and prompts the user to reset the device to factory settings. Users don't have to open an app, and the crashes still happen just by having an app with malformed adaptive icons artifacts on your phone. Google said it will fix the issue in Android Oreo 8.1.
Really guys?
Let's not even get into the stupidity of assuming a file extension (or that they stupidly walked the file system looking for the first matching NAME minus the extension) - but how can you let your SUPER SECURE OS get borked because of one unruly configured app which NEVER happens in the real world?!
Maybe I'm just getting old but it seems programmers is gettin' dumber every year, along with UI designers (or maybe, in this case, it's one and the same)
The two are not mutually exclusive...
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If they're sealed units, chances are there's no "SD card" inside. It's flash storage ICs soldered directly to the PCB.
#DeleteFacebook
"Jcbsera did not catch the bug during development because he tested his app's new version only inside the Android emulator provided by the Android Studio application. The bug did not manifest in the same way in the emulator as on a real device. It was only after the developer pushed the update to his users that he noticed and discovered the bug after users started flooding his Play Store page with crash complaints and bad reviews."
He didn't even try the app on a real device. That's "move fast and break things" in action.