--- title: "This Guy Accidentally Took a Photo That Crashes Android Smartphones" description: "Amateur photographer and scientist Gaurav Agrawal had no idea his spectacular picture of a lake in a National Park could end up crashing Android phones." date: "2020-06-10" modified: "2020-06-10" authors: - name: "Victor Tangermann" job_title: "Senior Editor" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/victor" url: "https://futurism.com/the-byte/guy-accidentally-took-photo-crashes-android-smartphones" categories: - "Computing" - "Devices" - "Robots and Machines" tags: - "android" - "photography" - "the digest" --- # This Guy Accidentally Took a Photo That Crashes Android Smartphones ![Amateur photographer and scientist Gaurav Agrawal had no idea his spectacular picture of a lake in a National Park could end up crashing Android phones.]() *\Image: Courtesy of Gaurav Agrawal\* ## Basilisk Stare Amateur photographer Gaurav Agrawal had no idea his spectacular picture of St. Mary Lake in Glacier National Park, Montana could end up mercilessly crashing countless Android phones. But if it was set as the wallpaper on smartphones running the Android 10 operating system, the phones started acting up, switching off and on repeatedly. "I didn't do anything intentionally," Agrawal [told the *BBC*](). "I'm sad that people ended up having issues." The image, edited in Adobe Lightroom and [uploaded to Flickr](), didn't seem to cause any issues on iPhones. But thanks to a tiny snafu during the export of the image, Agrawal unintentionally turned his gorgeous landscape photo into an Android-killing threat. ## Color Spaces So what the hell happened? Agrawal uploaded the image in "RGB," a color model that Android 10 phones just couldn't cope with — rather than the far more commonplace standard RGB (sRGB), as Twitter user Romain Guy [explained](). "RGB is a color model, not a color space," Guy wrote. A [deep dive]() into the code on Twitter by Android developer Dylan Roussel revealed that the color space may just not be supported on certain devices. "I hoped my photograph would have gone 'viral' for a good reason, but maybe that's for another time," Agrawal told the *BBC*. **READ MORE:** ['How my photo ended up breaking Android phones']() \[*BBC*\] **More on Android:** *[Google Just Admitted to Tracking Your Location Even When You Have the Settings Disabled]()* ## Author I've been at Futurism since 2017, where my role has evolved to encompass design, writing, and increasingly editing. I've always been fascinated by space exploration and advanced transportation, which I've leaned into by interviewing luminaries in those fields while closely following the dimensions of policy and regulation that allow next-generation projects to succeed -- or, sometimes, to fail. I'm also keenly interested in the effects of generative AI on society, policies, and democratic institutions, as well as clean energy, physics and biology, and the vagaries of tech leadership. My work for Futurism has been cited by publications including Ars Technica, Gizmodo, PC Magazine, Jalopnik, Fox News, and the New York Post. I spent my childhood living in locations including Manila, the Philippines, and Geneva, Switzerland, attended McGill University, and now live in Toronto, Canada. Before Futurism I worked at AskMen and a small photography studio. In my free time, I'm an avid gardener, foodie, and craft beer lover, as well as a maker of artisanal hot pepper sauces. I have a magnificent dog named Freida. ### Author social links [Bluesky]()