There is apparently now a three-character emoji message that instantly crashes any iPhone on version 10.0 through 10.1.1 as soon as you receive it. Not what you need when you're trying to banter with your mates.
The characters are a white flag, a zero and a rainbow emoji, as well as an invisible character, called variation sector 16 or VS16. What happens is that the old iPhone versions try to combine the emojis, which is impossible and makes the phone crash immediately!
The good news it that it doesn't damage the latest version - so all you have to do is update your phone and you'll be safe. Nice one.
And, thankfully, it's not as simple as sending a text message from one phone to another. You have to go into iCloud, paste the character string into the online version of Notes, and then open that on a phone and share it as a message.
Some clever guys have tried out another "trick" to freeze even the latest iOS, which involved a longer string of messages from iPhone to iPhone. They reported it slowed the phone down for a while, but it didn't completely freeze it.
It seems like a lot of things can crash the latest iOS. Reddit users found a 10-second corrupted MP4 file which, when you sent as an iMessage, can corrupt phones.
Don't sent it to your mates!
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Words: Laura Hamilton
Featured Image Credit: Creative CommonsTopics: iPhone