iPhone bug crash blamed on Marathi, Chinese scripts

The iMessage bug that causes iPhones and iPads to crash? Turns out it's a problem with non-Latin script characters like Arabic, Chinese and Marathi.

Workers-prepare-for-the-opening-of-an-Apple-store-in-Hangzhou-Zhejiang-province-Photo-Reuters

The iMessage bug that causes iPhones and iPads to crash? Turns out it's a problem with non-Latin script characters like Arabic, Chinese and Marathi. Here's how the bug crashes Apple's devices, says the Guardian, which tried to reproduce it 50 times before it succeeded:

When the text message is displayed by a banner alert or notification on the lockscreen, the system attempts to abbreviate the text with an ellipsis. If the ellipsis is placed in the middle of a set of non-Latin script characters, including Arabic, Marathi and Chinese, it causes the system to crash and the phone to reboot.

Apple hasn't issued a fix for the bug yet, only a statement from a spokesperson, which reads: 'We are aware of an iMessage issue caused by a specific series of unicode characters and we will make a fix available in a software update.'

Till that is available, here's what you can do to protect your iPhone and iPad: turn off banner notifications on your Apple devices. If you've already been bit, you can also try opening the Photos app and sending whoever sent you the message a picture, which miraculously seems to open up your crashed Messages app and allows you to delete the buggy message.