Sometimes just a letter or a picture is enough to crash a smartphone. In the most recent case, however, it is a video that is causing problems for smartphones from the manufacturer Google.
Google Pixel 7 series users report problems playing a specific YouTube video on Reddit. If you open the video in the YouTube app on a Pixel 7 or 7 Pro, the smartphone crashes and restarts. This is said to happen occasionally on Pixel 6 models and in third-party apps.
Certain video crashes Google Pixel smartphones
The video is about a scene from the 1979 classic horror film Alien. It is available in 4K resolution and with High-Dynamic Range (HDR). That could also be the problem. As users write in comments on YouTube and Reddit, newer Google Pixel devices seem to have difficulties displaying HDR content. However, since this only happens on Pixel 7 and Pixel 6 series phones, Google’s own hardware could be to blame. The company uses its self-developed tensor chip in these two series. Older Pixel devices with chips from the manufacturer Qualcomm can play the video without any problems.
The whole thing is reminiscent of a wallpaper error that also affected Google and Samsung smartphones. At that time, a screen background was circulating that put the Android user interface in a crash loop when opened. The reason for this was the color space that the image uses. It was exported using the ProPhoto RGB color space. However, since the smartphones use the narrower sRGB spectrum, they could not display the image. Since Android 11, the system has automatically converted the color spaces; the affected smartphones with Android 10 were not yet able to do this.
Fixed video bug on Pixel devices
The problem now seems to have been resolved, as users are now writing on social media. At least there are no more crashes when playing the video on Pixel smartphones. TECHBOOK did the test on a Google Pixel 7a, which also uses the Tensor chip, and the video didn’t cause an error.