iOS update: New Apple software stops iPhones breaking if they see just one letter

There are no other meaningful changes in the update, though a big one is coming very soon

Andrew Griffin
Tuesday 20 February 2018 09:55 GMT
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A girl reacts as she tries an iPhone X at the Apple Omotesando store on November 3, 2017 in Tokyo
A girl reacts as she tries an iPhone X at the Apple Omotesando store on November 3, 2017 in Tokyo

Apple has finally fixed a bug that meant iPhones could crash if they saw just one character.

Last week it emerged that when iPhones were sent a character in Telugu, a popular Indian language, the phone could stop working entirely and crash. It would have to restart itself before it started working again.

Now the company has rolled out an update – iOS 11.2.6 – that will fix that issue. It doesn't bring any major new features apart from that change, but big alterations are coming soon.

When Apple acknowledged the fix, it said that it would look to release an update to prevent it as soon as possible.

The problem could affect any phone using a wide variety of popular chat apps. As such, the update is recommended to all users – whatever Apple software they're on, including the Apple TV and Watch.

Apple has been forced to introduce an update to stop crashing bugs a number of times in recent months. In December, for instance, a bug in iOS 11 caused phones to crash if they just received a notification – but the problem was fixed hours later with an emergency update sent out to phones.

The new update comes from iOS 11.3, which is expected to drop in spring. That will bring a whole range of improvements: most notably new battery tools to protect against the "iPhone slow" controversy, but other features including updates to augmented reality.

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