OS / Software

Samsung's TouchWiz Clipboard Bug That Crashes Smartphones And Tablets Remains Unfixed

Jimmie Geddes email: j.geddes@mobilenapps.com

Samsung is facing major criticism from developers and users as it still hasn't fixed the clipboard bug that surfaced weeks after the release of the Samsung Galaxy S3.

The bug crashes any application and in some cases completely crashes the smartphone or tablet if the clipboard has previously been used to copy more than 20 items of data. Samsung still hasn't even acknowledged that the bug exists. A video below shows what many owners of Samsung smartphones and tablets are experiencing.

The problem appears to come from Samsung's custom TouchWiz UI, which it uses to run on top of Android. A major reason why TouchWiz seems to be the culprit of this bug is that the Samsung Galaxy Nexus does not suffer from this bug, nor do any Samsung smartphones that have been rooted to run custom ROMs that don't include TouchWiz.

What many users and developers are finding most frustrating is that although it has been well documented and brought to Samsung's attention, the smartphone maker has not even officially acknowledged the bug exists. So it's unclear when Samsung will fix this bug. Only Samsung can develop a fix for the issue, since it lies in Samsung's TouchWiz UI.

The only way users have been able to work around the issue is by performing a complete factory reset, which completely erases the smartphone. Users who have rooted their devices have found a workaround by clearing the contents of the /data/clipboard folder, which again, does not exist in stock Android devices and is more evidence that this is clearly a Samsung TouchWiz issue.

According to the Guardian, Samsung's official developers were notified of the issue in October through the Samsung Developer Forums, where it was described as a "fatal clipboard bug." Developers were able to pinpoint the file directory where the issue is coming from and a developer, Veeti Paananen, told the Guardian, "The fault is clearly with the Samsung software." 

He also went on to say of a recent software update Samsung released: "Some say that a 4.1.x update has fixed it but others claim that the problem just returns later on. Even if a 4.1 update has fixed the issue, there are a lot of Samsung devices that will not receive an update past Android 4.0."

Hopefully Samsung will acknowledge that this bug exists and more importantly, provide a fix for its users. Completely having to wipe your phone as a workaround is not only frustrating, it's unacceptable. Your move, Samsung.

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