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'Unapologetically blue': Microsoft's 'Blue Screen of Death' hits iPhone 5s

The notorious error-screen is hitting Apple smartphones and seems to be linked to the iWork app.

James Vincent
Tuesday 15 October 2013 11:57 BST
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A man holds a new Apple iPhone 5S (R) next to his iPhone 5 at an Apple Store at Tokyo's Ginza shopping district September 20, 2013.
A man holds a new Apple iPhone 5S (R) next to his iPhone 5 at an Apple Store at Tokyo's Ginza shopping district September 20, 2013.

It’s an unexpected collaboration between two of tech’s most bitter rivals, but if reports are to be believed then Microsoft’s infamous Blue Screen of Death (or BSoD) is making a surprise appearance on Apple’s new iPhone 5s.

The BSoD is an error screen associated with older versions of Windows and is displayed after the system has suffered an irrecoverable crash. However, Apple customers are now reporting the same screen appearing on their iPhones just before the device crashes and reboots.

The error has been reported on Apple’s support forum and over Twitter and appears to be only affecting the new iPhone 5s and Apple’s office suite, iWork.

User gauroavojha reported the error on 29 September, saying: “How do I resolve the blue screen error while using iWork on my iPhone 5s? When I use Pages, for example, and press home button to switch app, my iPhone restarts after a blue screen.”

The apparent fix is to turn off iWork’s sync with iCloud – a service that backs up documents and data – but doing so certainly reduces the functionality of the office suite.

The last update to iOS 7 was at the end of September, when the 7.0.2 version was released to fix an exploit that allowed access to handsets even when they were locked. If the BSoD error persists, it seems another fix will soon be in order.

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