Clipboard bug crashing and wiping some Samsung Galaxy S3 and Note devices

By Joshua Pramis Published February 22, 2013

Those of you that own Android-operated Samsung devices, like the Galaxy S3 and Galaxy Note, should be aware of a bug that can crash and reboot your device. As reported by Android Authority, which discovered the bug via a YouTube video, devices running TouchWiz and operating on versions of Android from 3.0-4.1 can crash if the user copies text too many times.

Apparently, the magic number is 20 copies. Since the devices operate using a smart clipboard, which remembers all of a user’s past copies, it appears that, for whatever reason, it tends to become overloaded by the time the history reaches 20.

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Most of the time, the overload just causes the device to reboot. It’s annoying, to be sure, but it’s not the worst thing that could happen. However, in some extreme cases, it appears that the crash can actually wipe the device completely clean. That is enough to cause a headache and a panic attack for anyone.

In some extreme cases, it appears that the crash can actually wipe the device completely clean

It appears that Samsung has known about this bug for a whopping four months, and has been trying to correct it ever since. But we’re not sure when the company will actually start to roll out the fix. It shouldn’t take more than a quick software update, but the timing is going to depend both on when they figure out what to do, and when each mobile provider agrees to send the fixes; Samsung isn’t able to send out the update on its own.

But we do have to say: it’s kind of shocking that, considering this bug has been known about since October, that it hasn’t been fixed and is still being experienced on newer devices. Samsung, as one of the industry leaders, should make fixing something this big a top priority. Fingers crossed for an update soon, but until then, we’re going to pause with the copying.

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