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Modern smartphones are incredibly complex, with the ability to display a huge range of content and to navigate a complex set of color gamuts, file formats, and media types. Occasionally, however, some of those capabilities interact with each other in unanticipated ways, and you get a problem like this.

As first spotted by Twitter account Ice Universe, using the wrong wallpaper on an Android phone can send the device into a soft brick. While it isn’t technically dead, the phone will endlessly boot-loop due to Android’s inability to handle the color space used for the following photo. Note: Viewing the photo won’t damage your Android device — just don’t set it as your wallpaper.

WARNING！！！
Never set this picture as wallpaper, especially for Samsung mobile phone users!
It will cause your phone to crash!
Don’t try it!
If someone sends you this picture, please ignore it. pic.twitter.com/rVbozJdhkL

— Ice universe (@UniverseIce) May 31, 2020

Here’s an example of what the actual soft boot looks like.

Update: Samsung has received feedback on this type of bug in mid-May, and has resolved this issue. Just wait for the subsequent firmware update and do not take the risk. pic.twitter.com/oa7rxnkSkb

— Ice universe (@UniverseIce) June 1, 2020

Device behavior seems to vary slightly depending on the model and manufacturer. Sometimes people have been able to change their wallpaper before the device crashes or use the TWRP recovery tool, but this appears to be more the exception than the rule. Most of the time, affected users have no choice but to perform a factory reset. Samsung is reportedly working on a fix in UEFI, and Android 11 should also resolve the problem. In the meantime, don’t use this image for wallpaper.

According to developer Davide Bianco, the problem is caused by a lack of support for non-sRGB images in the Android SystemUI itself. This is why you can view the image just fine in-browser, but setting it as a wallpaper will temporarily brick your phone. When SystemUI attempts to map color values, the values in the image above exceed the array size and crash the phone.

In theory, these sorts of images can be used as a booby-trap. Send someone a gorgeous wallpaper, they install it, and boom — their device is now boot-looped. Android 11 will fix the problem by supporting non-SRGB wallpapers without this kind of problem.

Weirdly, not every single Android device is vulnerable to this problem. A Huawei Mate 20 Pro didn’t crash when tested by 9to5Google and OnePlus devices are also rumored to be immune. Products from Samsung, on the other hand, very much aren’t. It’s possible that the specific restrictions or software changes on the Huawei and OnePlus devices allow them to handle this kind of content differently.

Either way, best not to source wallpaper from random people until this problem is resolved, unless you’ve recently backed your phone up. Apple, of course, has had similar problems — on two separate occasions, sending the wrong character to an iPhone has been demonstrated to cause it to crash.

This fall, Apple is expected to launch four new iPhone models. Dozens of leaks and reports have suggested that all four iPhone 12 models will feature OLED displays, 5G support, and a faster processor. We might also see a number of rather notable design changes, from a smaller notch at the top of the display to a metal frame similar to that of the iPhone 4. That said, Apple is expected to save any major design overhauls for the 2021 iPhone line, and despite the fact that it’s still June of 2020, a new leak purports to reveal the design of the iPhone 13.

Japanese blog Mac Otakara shared images and a video this week of a 3D-printed mockup of what it claims to be a 5.5-inch iPhone coming out next year. The site says that the mockup is from “Alibaba sources,” but it doesn’t go into detail. According to the leak, the model in the video below is a successor to the 5.4-inch iPhone 12 launching this fall, so we can assume this is one of the lower-end iPhone 13 models (providing it’s real, of course).

The most obvious difference between this mockup and the leaked iPhone 12 designs we’ve seen up to this point is the missing sensor housing at the top of the display. There’s no notch on the purported iPhone 13, which implies that Apple will place the TrueDepth camera and sensors underneath the screen. Mac Otakara also says that Apple might be testing a camera at the bottom of the screen, but doesn’t explain how that would work.

Although the screen size is slightly larger, the dimensions of the 5.5-inch iPhone 13 are supposedly in line with those of the 5.4-inch iPhone 12. The bezels surrounding the screen are even smaller than the ones found on the iPhone 11, and Mac Otakara suggests Apple might be upgrading the Super Retina XDR display to achieve this.

On the back of the mockup, five dots can be seen where the camera module should be, which Mac Otakara says can be used “for testing various camera modules.” Some earlier rumors have claimed that Apple may find a way to fit up to four cameras on the back of the iPhone 13, as well as a LiDAR Scanner.

Finally, what appears to be a USB-C port has replaced the Lightning connector at the bottom of the iPhone 13. We have seen rumors lately suggesting Apple’s iPhone models beyond 2020 might be completely portless. Needless to say, we’re going to take this leak with a grain of salt. Mac Otakara says that this is just one of the prototypes currently in the works, so even if it really did come from Apple, there’s a chance it will never see the light of day. Nevertheless, the prospect of a truly all-screen iPhone is sure to get fans excited.

Microsoft has started to push the Chromium-based Edge browser to Windows 10 users through the Windows Update service, according to company support documents.

“This update will be downloaded and installed automatically from Windows Update,” stated one of three support documents, marked KB4541301, KB4541302 and KB4541309.

Those documents spelled out previous updates that were required for the Edge auto-download, the versions of Windows effected by the Edge download-and-install – 1809, 1903, 1909 and the latest 2004 – and what data is supposed to migrate from the old Edge to the new.

Ghacks reported earlier this week on the support documents and their signaling of a start to Edge’s automatic downloading.

Systems served by Windows Update will be offered Edge 83, the current version since May 21, when Microsoft restarted the browser’s numbering. Microsoft, like Chrome, paused updates for several weeks, from late March to early April, because of the coronavirus pandemic; to make up for lost time, both Chrome and Edge skipped version 82, upgrading from 81 to 83 directly.

The trio of support documents did not lay out whether enterprises will be subjected to the Edge auto-download, but linked to prior pieces Microsoft has posted that do. From those documents, it was clear that Microsoft’s original plans, first revealed in January, have not changed.

In summary, Microsoft will:

• Not auto-download-and-install Edge to PCs running Windows 10 Enterprise, Windows 10 Education or Windows 10 Workstation Pro.
• Not auto-download-and-install Edge to PCs running Windows 10 Home or Windows 10 Pro if that machine is managed by IT. The latter is defined as systems joined to an Active Directory (AD) or Azure Active Directory (AAD) domain, those updated using WSUS (Windows Server Update Services) or WUfB (Windows Update for Business), and those administered using tools like Intune and SCCM (System Center Configuration Manager).
• Not auto-download-and-install Edge to PCs running Windows 10 Home or Windows 10 Pro which have been excluded using Edge’s Blocker Toolkit. More information about the Toolkit can be found here.

Absent new information from Microsoft, those PCs should be immune from Chromium Edge’s auto-deployment.

Meanwhile, legacy Edge goes dark

Simultaneously, Microsoft also announced it has halted development of the legacy version of Edge as of the recently-released Windows 10 May 2020 Update.

“The legacy version of Microsoft Edge is no longer being developed,” Microsoft said in a support document last revised May 28. The statement was listed as “announced” in Windows 10 2004, the May 2020 Update which the Redmond, Wash. company released May 27.

The original Edge – the version bundled with Windows 10 at its July 2015 debut and the operating system’s long-time default – thus joins Internet Explorer (IE) in the still-around-but-not-evolving category. Microsoft stopped development of IE in 2016, but continues to serve security updates to the browser on Windows 10, 8.1, and 7.

Since January, Microsoft has been clear that the Chromium-based Edge would replace the original, so the development deprecation should not come as a surprise. The act should also be taken as the hint it is, that at some point, likely not long after Chromium-Edge has reached feature parity with the original, the company will do away with the legacy version entirely.

Microsoft spent years trying to entice Windows 10 users to open Edge, going so far as to push “warnings” about Chrome’s battery life usage. In the end, Microsoft threw in the towel and announced its move to Chromium in late 2018. The first developer builds of Edge came just a few months after the announcement. Roughly a year later, the browser was ready for prime time. 

Chromium Edge (Microsoft just calls it “Edge”) uses the same open-source engine behind Google’s Chrome browser. It even looks a bit like Chrome, but Microsoft has made some changes to bring it in-line with the Windows aesthetic and integrate custom features like collections, a dark theme, and tracking prevention. It’s also much faster and better at rendering pages than Microsoft’s EdgeHTML engine from the legacy Edge browser. 

Microsoft started pushing the Chromium Edge browser to some PCs in January 2020. There was also a manual download for those who wanted to run the latest and greatest right away. Only people running the April 2018 update (version 1803) got the browser automatically, allowing Microsoft to watch for any issues in the upgrade. Now, the new Edge is rolling out to anyone running version 1803 through the latest may 2020 update (version 2004).The new Edge is recognizable as Chromium, but it has Microsoft styling and services built-in.

Microsoft says the KB4559309 update will add Edge to your PC. The upgrade process will move your favorites, passwords, and other personal data from the old browser to the new one. However, there is no way to go back to the legacy version of Edge after upgrading. You can avoid the update for a bit longer if you really want the old browser for some reason, but its days are numbered. 

The new Edge helped Microsoft pass Firefox’s usage share back in April. Rolling the browser out to most Windows 10 installs should boost it even more. However, Microsoft probably isn’t going to get anywhere close to Google, which owns nearly 70 percent of the desktop browser market, according to NetMarketShare.

All right, so that last one might be a bit of an exaggeration (though only a little). But that aside, these are all shockingly common sentiments you hear not only from tech enthusiasts but also from people who write about this stuff for a living.

And I’m here to tell you they’re all equally misguided. Now, don’t get me wrong: There’s a nugget of truth to every one of those statements (even the last one; hey, we’re all proud nerds here, right?). Lots of folks using Android genuinely don’t have the most optimal privacy scenario or the most secure setup imaginable on their phones. A depressingly high number of Android phone-owners don’t get timely and reliable software updates. And, yes, a huge amount of Android users have horrible user experiences (whether they actively realize it or not).

But treating all of those issues as blanket condemnations of Android itself — as inherent and unavoidable flaws with the platform — overlooks one key point. It’s a foundational reality of Android that’s been at the system’s core since the start, and keeping it front of mind changes the entire view of what Android represents.

The best way to sum it up is with two complementary words: choice and control.

Choice and control: Two platforms, two approaches

For people accustomed to the Apple universe, the notion of choice and control within a smartphone environment can be a funny concept to grasp. When you buy an iPhone, for better or sometimes for worse, you get The Apple Way™ — the Apple way of balancing privacy with function, the Apple way of providing Apple-controlled software updates to Apple-made devices, the Apple way of forcing you to see a static grid of all your app’s icons on your home screen all the time, and the Apple way of having to use Apple apps as your default browser, email service, mapping service, and so on.

Like I said, some good, some…not so good. But it’s always The Apple Way™.

And so when people who are accustomed to that sort of approach think about Android, they frequently assume Android operates in a similar manner — that whatever they read about or see on, say, a Samsung phone is The Android Way. The problem is that there isn’t an “Android way” — not in any Apple-esque, platform-wide level.

Instead, Android allows for a fair amount of — yep, you guessed it — choice and control. Sometimes, that choice and control lands in the hands of you, the user. Other times, it’s in the arms of the company that made the device. Either way, just like in the Apple universe, the result is a mix of positives and negatives.

Critically, that same level of choice and control is a huge part of what allowed Android to catch on initially and then grow into its position as the world’s most widely used operating system. In the early days of Android, it was the fact that phone-makers and carriers alike could bring their own unique flavors and business interests into the software that convinced so many players to sign on. And still today, that flexibility is a powerful part of what makes Android appealing to companies like Samsung, which want to push their own profit-turning services and to handle software the way they see fit just as much as they want to hawk hardware.

Again: It’s a mix of pros and cons, particularly from the perspective of someone who actually uses these products. But that brings us back to the statements we went over at the start of this story — the misleading generalities about areas like privacy, security, upgrades, and user experience on Android.

The problem with those statements is the way they overlook the key factors of choice and control — because even in a situation where the device-maker is the one with the ultimate control, you as the user are always the one with the choice.

Choice and control within Android

We’ll start with privacy — an area where Apple really likes to act superior (at least, when the narrative fits). But despite what the casual sweater-wearing executives on stages keep saying, the reality isn’t actually that it’s impossible to have dialed-up privacy on Android. It’s simply that Google’s business model and the services Google provides rely upon the responsible use of a certain amount of data in order to operate. And if you don’t want your data used in that way, you can make an educated decision to change it — at a certain cost, of course, when it comes to functionality.

Now, the flip side is that most Android privacy matters operate via a system of defaults — and most people aren’t gonna take the time to navigate the labyrinth of related settings. What’s more, most people would probably pick the functionality they get as a result of their data being used over the lower-functionality, higher-privacy alternative, anyway. But the choice is there, as I lay out in my new Android privacy guide; it’s just up to you to embrace it.

What about security? Well, it’s true that Android does allow you to install apps from external sources — the horror! — but, y’know, it’s also a choice. Most typical phone-owners will never wander into a shady-looking forum in some dusty corner of the web and download an app posted by a guy named Ned. Even if they do attempt to do that, they’ll have to go through multiple layers of warnings and overrides before their phone will let them. And still then, their system will scan the file to look for any known issues and identify any red flags. It’s essentially an enhanced and significantly lower-risk version of the same thing you get when using a regular computer. And just like in that environment, a little common sense goes a long way.

That brings us to the realm of updates — both OS-level and the monthly security patch complements (both of which are equally important when it comes to optimal privacy and security protection, by the way). It’s true that most Android device-makers do an embarrassingly bad job at providing software updates to their devices and that you as the user are the one who suffers from that negligence, even with the way Google has made OS updates themselves less all-important on Android than they are on iOS. We talk about that constantly in these quarters.

But what often gets lost in that conversation is the fact that if timely and reliable software updates are important to you — and by golly, they oughta be, especially if you’re a business user — you absolutely can have them; you just have to choose a phone that provides that type of experience. And in the Android ecosystem right now, that basically means choosing one of Google’s self-made Pixel phones.

And that leads us to the biggest point of all in this discussion: The Pixel, as I’ve put it before, is essentially the closest thing to an iPhone-like equivalent within the Android world. It’s a device made by the company responsible for the operating system; supported directly by that same company, with no middlemen or mitigating forces involved; and with an unmeddled version of that company’s widely lauded vision for what the user experience should be — a vision that eschews confusing redundant apps competing for your attention and creates an ecosystem-wide consistency in design.

Unlike with iOS, though, on Android, that isn’t the only choice. You can have it if you want it, but it’s a decision for you to make. There’s no shortage of diversity within the platform, and if you find another phone’s size, style, or stamina to be more appealing, you can have that, too. It ultimately just comes down to a matter of priorities — and a matter of educating yourself about the possibilities.

Android and iOS have grown increasingly similar over the years, but the foundational difference of choice and control continues to be a significant factor that separates ’em. Neither platform’s approach is inherently better, but they are strikingly different. And the sooner we can all internalize that, the sooner we can stop having silly discussions that revolve around an inaccurate assumption.