How innocent photo of Montana ended up breaking millions of Android phones worldwide

They just don't make 'em like they used to, and while appliances could be passed down for generations back in the day, modern tech is accused of being in a turn-and-burn cycle. How often has your phone only just passed its warranty, when it suddenly starts breaking down and mysteriously costs a fortune to fix?

We've also got Apple, which continues to churn out new iPhones every year, trying to tempt us to turn in last year's model just so we can get the latest spec. It's true that big overhauls like the rumored foldable iPhone would likely get us trading, but recent releases have been slammed for not really changing much.

When we're spending this much on phones, you'd typically expect them to last a while. Still, we know that they might not be as sturdy as something like the trusty Nokia 3310, feeling like it could survive a nuclear explosion. Added to this, hackers and malware are a constant threat.

Back in 2019, Google had to deal with a massive issue when it came to Android phones, as millions around the globe were left unusable. Instead of this being a malicious attack from some group of international hackers, Android was brought to its knees thanks to an amateur photographer.

The story of Gaurav Agrawal has become the stuff of legend after snapping a serene photograph at Montana's Glacier National Park. Later sharing his sunset shot on Flickr, Agrawal inadvertently broke millions of Android phones.

With this beautiful sunset looking like the perfect phone wallpaper, users started to use Agrawal's picture...much to the detriment of their devices.

Android handsets were effectively bricked, repeatedly turning off and on before requiring a full factory reset that wiped them. Samsung and Google's Pixel phones were affected, with the mystery eventually being traced back to the sunset photo.

Using his Nikon camera, Agrawal made a small edit using Lightroom software. Lightroom has a 'three color-mode' option when it comes to exporting, and it's thought that this is where the bug crept in, as Android handsets were sent into a spiral.

Speaking to the BBC, Agrawal explained how he became something of a hate figure: "I didn't do anything intentionally. I'm sad that people ended up having issues."

Causing an issue with phones running Android 10, Ken Munro and Dave Lodge from security firm Pen Test Partners revealed exactly what went wrong: "As digital photographs have improved in quality, phones need to check what the image 'colour space' is to work out how to display it properly.

"It's how a phone knows how to display exactly the right shade of green, for example.

"There are different ways of defining the colour space. Some spaces have specialist uses in graphic design, so sometimes you'll see images that aren't in the usual 'Standard RGB' format. It's also possible to deliberately create images that have more colour information than some devices can handle.

"What's happened here is that the way some phones deal with these cases has gone wrong.

"The phone crashes because it doesn't know how to deal with it correctly, and the software developers probably hadn't considered this might happen."

Google managed to fix the issue moving forward, but to this day, Agrawal's image lives on. As for what he thinks, the wannabe photographer concluded: "I hoped my photograph would have gone ‘viral’ for a good reason, but maybe that’s for another time.

“I’m going to use another format from now on.”

Even though there were plenty of angry iPhone users out there, Agrawal's love of photography has continued, and he was even featured in National Geographic magazine. If you come across one of his pictures, it might be best to steer clear of trying to set it as your Android background.