There is nothing much worse than your phone dying when you need it most. But how about having it crash – when you need it most – even when you have a full battery?
I just experienced the awful realization of my phone crashing. Not only did it crash, but it crashed when I was using it to get me home from a much-needed Chipotle run. It came back to life seconds later. Still, I was quite annoyed until I realized that I had received a text from my roommate, shown below:
I was very confused at first, and had no idea what his text was referencing. It did not even cross my mind that his text was the reason that my phone crashed.
But… I was wrong.
According to a CNN article, the text is able to crash your iPhone due to a bug in the Apple’s iOS.
The reason why this crash is so annoying is because you do not have to open the text message for your phone to shut off. Once your iPhone receives the text, it will crash for 15 seconds. That being said, pranking any iPhone user is a fairly easy task (for the time being).
apple.com/iphone-6
Apple’s Response
Apple is aware of the issue and has shared with its users that they will have a fix for the problem:
“We are aware of an iMessage issue caused by a specific series of unicode characters, and we will make a fix available in a software update,” it told consumers.
As of now, though, no update has been released for the iPhone and text will resume being a problem if your friends choose to send it to you, or if you send it out to other iPhone users.
Where did this Code Come From?
As of now, it’s unclear who figured out this phone-crashing scheme, and whether it was a mistake, or whether someone was intentionally trying to cause problems for iPhone users. It is clear that awareness of the glitch originally surfaced as an item reported on popular site and forum Reddit. It’s also been noted that the Arabic letters in the code, which are followed by one Japanese letter at the bottom of the text, don’t spell anything.
Click here to see a video demonstrating the effect that texted unicode will have on your iPhone.
@mikko recommends doing this if you are sent the crash code
This story from CNBC.com revealed a tweet from a user who offered recommendations on how to combat the crash message (on left).
What do you think of this problem in Apple’s iOS? Has this happened to you? Let me know in the comments below or Tweet me @ceek22.