![New iOS bug can crash iPhones. [image source: flickr/Tako Goto]](https://staticr1.blastingcdn.com/media/photogallery/2018/2/14/660x290/b_502x220x82/iphone-on-wooden-surface-flickrtako-goto_1835029.jpg "New iOS bug can crash iPhones. [image source: flickr/Tako Goto]")
Do you or someone you know text using a different language on your iPhone? If so, this Bug may affect you. Anyone who uses Telegu (an Indian language) symbols in a text may trigger the bug and lock up their entire phone reports Business Insider.
Telegu is spoken by more than 70 million people in India. That's a lot of people that could potentially be affected by this bug. Apple plans to address the bug before the release of iOS 11.3 this spring, according to The Verge, but there are no specifics on when an update will be issued.
The bug
Another iOS bug is crashing iPhones and disabling access to iMessage https://t.co/9do0xyz7k4 pic.twitter.com/15Ripq7PP8
— Tom Warren (@tomwarren) February 15, 2018
The video above shows the bug in action.
The moment a text with the bug is received, the app that opened the text crashes. Every time you attempt to open the app to view the message, it crashes.
According to VentureBeat, if the message is posted into a text app, the entire phone can crash. If that happens, developers recommend waiting and hoping for the phone to restart properly as forcibly restarting it can result in a boot loop, potentially requiring you to reinstall the operating system (OS).
The two specific characters that trigger the bug are shown below.
It's these two characters written side by side, as it is, it doesn't mean anything on its own, the 1st one is spelled "Zee" and the 2nd doesn't make sense pic.twitter.com/f3x9rsjN0Z
— Bhaskar (@bhaskar224) February 15, 2018
The bug also affects third-party applications such as Gmail according to The Verge.
The bug also affects platforms other than the iPhone, such as the Apple Watch.
Other bugs
Apple has a history of strange iOS bugs. Just last month there was a bug that could freeze an iPhone using a single link. Called the chaiOS, the bug exploited the fact that Apple's Messages app preloads any links in messages to show users a preview of the webpage.
Before that, in December, there was an iOS 11 bug that froze iPhones and Apple quickly issued a fix just hours after the bug started to occur.
According to The Verge, the company is supposedly focusing on reliability and performance instead of adding new features. It's reported that the company has allowed its developers to push features to later releases instead of cramming them all into one large update.
This method allows for the company to focus on resolving the security issues and bugs that it has discovered in its OS' recently.
This particular bug is fixed in the beta version of iOS 11.3, which is already publicly available, though the final release of the iOS isn't slated to happen until the spring. Apple has said that it is currently working on a fix for current and previous versions of its OS' but has yet to give a specific date. They have confirmed, however, that the fix will be issued before the release of iOS 11.3.
