Slashdot Mirror
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.
forcing some users to reset their devices to factory settings, causing users to lose data along the way.
I'm out of touch; my phone runs 4.1.2 Jelly Bean. But I don't get it. Resetting to factory settings doesn't erase the SD card, does it? If so, pull it out before resetting.
Not unless you're an apple fanboy looking for a reason to complain online...
The two are not mutually exclusive...
This sig left unintentionally blank.
No, nothing so nefarious. It's just jealousy on the part of the poor little Android phones. They seem to think if they can go into one infinite loop, they will magically be transformed into iPhones.
Simple when you think about it for a bit.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Remember all the wailing and gnashing of teeth about devices that don't have SD card slots anymore? Yeah, those are the same newer devices that actually have a prayer of seeing an updated image that could cause this problem.
By the way, nice OS release where the simple installation of an app, and not actually running it, can destroy your operating config to the point of effectively needing to reimage the device... and then not actually fixing the root cause until 8.1. Are they fucking serious with that?
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
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.