'How can a simple image crash an Android phone to the point that it becomes unusable?

It’s a question that came out frequently over the past 24 hours, as news of a “cursed wallpaper” spread around the web.

Here’s a recap: Setting a particular image as wallpaper can send some phones into a loop of crashes that makes them unusable.

There are a few solutions, depending on how hard the phone is hit. Some users were able to change the wallpaper in the short interval between crashes. Others had success deleting the wallpaper using the recovery tool TWRP. But in most cases, the only solution was to reset the phone to factory settings, losing any data that’s not backed up.

The issue was brought to light by Ice Universe, the Chinese Twitter users known for leaks. Based on user reports, many models from Samsung and Google are affected, while we’ve also seen some reports from users of OnePlus, Nokia, and Xiaomi devices (it’s not clear if these latter devices ran stock software or custom ROMs). From our own testing and looking at user reports, Huawei devices seem to be less exposed to the wallpaper crash issue.'

-- source: https://www.androidauthority.com/android-wallpaper-crash-1124577/

Cheers, Peter