Entertainment
Surprisingly, a single YouTube video has the potential to cause serious harm to Google Pixel’s top-of-the-line smartphone
Smartphones today are incredibly powerful devices that can capture 200MP photos, shoot 8K videos, and even outperform desktop computers in terms of speed and performance. However, all that advanced computing power turns out to be no match for the formidable power of… a video on YouTube. At least, that’s the case with Google’s Pixel phone.
Smartphones today are incredibly powerful devices that can capture 200MP photos, shoot 8K videos, and even outperform desktop computers in terms of speed and performance. However, all that advanced computing power turns out to be no match for the formidable power of… a video on YouTube. At least, that’s the case with Google Pixel phone.
The video in question is a 4K HDR clip from Ridley Scott’s Alien movie. Simply opening YouTube and playing this video can cause your Pixel phone to crash and restart to the home screen.
OGPixel5 user on Reddit seems to be the first to discover this issue, sharing the story last weekend to ask if anyone else had experienced similar problems. And when many people tried, they also had similar experiences on their Pixel phones.
9to5Google tested the video on the Pixel 7 Pro, the highest-end phone in the Pixel lineup. But it also got the same result. In the experience video, users can scroll up to see comments below, but as soon as they hit the play button, the phone will shut down and restart.
According to Reddit, it seems that the issue affects a range of Pixel smartphones. Commenters said that playing this video could damage Pixel 7, Pixel 6, and Pixel 6a models. Additionally, some people complained about losing access to mobile connectivity for a few minutes after the incident.
Some people have come up with hypotheses to explain the issue. They believe that the problem may be similar to the story of a wallpaper that could crash Android phones a few years ago. The cause of this error was believed to be due to the wallpaper’s color configuration exceeding the threshold that the Android operating system could accept, causing the device to conflict with the system.
It’s likely that something similar happened in the above-mentioned Alien clip. It’s highly probable that a frame (or even a pixel) of this HDR video caused the color processing of the Pixel phone to “stutter.” If so, Google will soon release a software update to fix the issue.
However, until then, users should stay away from clips from the Alien movie, especially if they’re using a Google Pixel phone.