Roger Fingas
iPhone owners are cautioned to be careful about tapping unsolicited links as a new five-second MP4 video, currently being shared online, is causing devices to freeze not long after it's played.
The video is corrupt, and appears to be generating a loop which causes iOS 10 to crash, according to The Verge, which tested the glitch on several iPhones running versions of iOS 10.1.x or the iOS 10.2 beta. The issue first came to light on Reddit.
Notably the crash takes about 10 seconds, during which people can do other things on their iPhone as the device gradually slows down. Once an iPhone freezes the only option is to reboot it, though it should work as normal once it recovers.
Apple has yet to announce a fix for the issue.
The company has had to deal with similar issues in the past, such as in 2015, when a text string sent through Messages was able to prevent people from reopening the app, or would crash an iPhone entirely.
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36 Comments
Well that shouldn't happen.
They should get on top of that right away.
How about letting readers know what is the "problem video"? That's a basic story coverage requirement here.
Well that explains the rude experience I had with my first iPhone crash just a couple of days ago - more specifics would be good at this point. Thanks for the heads up despite its being after the fact.
Wow. A video that forces you to reboot your phone if you play it? Sounds dangerous. Apple doom! /s... Or a mild inconvenience at best. I can tell you about several other glitches that have plagued my
iphones over the years, including my current 6s, that are as inconvenient, if not more so than this. They aren't "perfect" and yes you're going to have to reboot them because ... glitches.
Next time details about the video video might be helpful so we can inform our less tech savy friends what to look out for. But for the record you didn't even include the detail from the verge article that mentions you have to receive it as a link rather than as an actual video file attachement.