Users will need to delete their iMessage conversation with whichever prankster sent them the booby-trapped emoji to avoid repeated crashes on opening the messages. The irony of the prank this time is that by using the contact card it is quite difficult to avoid crashing the sender’s smartphone or even Mac computer, if sent through the desktop Messages app. Users sent either the emojis via iMessage or the contact card see their iPhone or iPad crash after a short period of time, either resulting in a full lock up requiring a reboot, or a partial lockup that triggers a quick reboot. What I’m assuming is happening is that the phone tries to combine the waving white flag and the zero into an emoji, but this obviously can’t be done.” “The text you’re copying is actually a waving white flag, VS16, zero, rainbow emoji. He said: “What variation selector 16 (VS16) does in this case essentially is tell the device to combine the two surrounding characters into one emoji, yielding the rainbow flag. EverythingApplePro demonstrating the emoji crash bug.įrench iOS developer Vincent Desmurs, who claims to have discovered the bug, suggested that the issue is caused by Apple’s handling of the variation selector and the emojis beside it.