Samsung Copy and Paste Bug

http://shkspr.mobi/blog/2013/02/samsung-copy-paste-bug-aka-never-buy-samsung-galaxy-phones/

by threedaymonk • 13 years ago

68 37 13 years ago

daemonl• 13 years ago

I tried... But i can't crash my s3 and I've been copying and pasting for 5 solid minutes (which I'm probably not getting back)

edent2• 13 years ago

For best results (!) try using the Chrome Browser. I've found that it crashes in all sorts of apps - but Chrome seems to be the most common.

easytiger• 13 years ago

i use copy paste a lot and have been using samsung phones since the day of release of the SGS1 and never encountered an issue like this

LeonidasXIV• 13 years ago

Can't reproduce either, International S3 with the current Samsung build of 4.1.2. Tried it with Samsung keyboard and K9 mail, but even after having a mail with 20+ times "File:///" copied over and over, nothing happened.

Also, I've had considerably less crashes on the S3 than on my previous N1.

kecebongsoft• 13 years ago

I've experienced this many times, but not to the point where my phone get restarted. I used to buy a $5 prepaid phone credits through online banking, and I have to copy and paste the serial number onto the caller app, that's when the browser crashes and I literally lost my $5. What a frustration.

This happened when there are quite amount of elements in the page (text, images, tables, divs). So instead of directly copying from the e-banking site, I now choose 'Search <s/n> in Google' option after blocking the text, and then Google, with much simpler output will render the S/N once again where I can copy it safely. Not sure if this is the problem with Android, or Samsung. I have a moderate amount of installed apps and running background services, my phone is S3.

Jenk2• 13 years ago

This article really reads as "Hey guys, we can finally jump down Samsung's throat for something, who's with me?"

_Simon• 13 years ago

I suggest that you read to the bottom of the article.

Jenk2• 13 years ago

I had read the article in it's entirety before posting that comment, thank you very much.

Stratoscope2• 13 years ago

Doesn't happen on my Verizon Galaxy Note II running CleanROM ACE 4.5. Didn't happen with 4.2.5 or the stock Verizon ROM either. I've been using SwiftKey on each and have never seen this happen. And I do a lot of copy and paste - I've never counted, but easily more than 20 times without rebooting.

drivers99• 13 years ago

It says in the article the problem is with Samsung's keyboard app, in which they've added a clipboard history feature. Since you are using a different app (SwiftKey) it doesn't apply to you.

andrewaylett• 13 years ago

However, it also says:

If you don't use the Samsung Keyboard, items are still copied onto their clipboard - but you're unable to access them.

Which suggests that the issue should be affecting me, but it's not. Nor did I see it for the few days after getting the phone when I was using their keyboard.

I'm not suggesting that he's not experiencing the issue, but it's obviously not as universal as he suggests.

Stratoscope2• 13 years ago

It says that in the article, eh? :-)

This is where I would usually say, "Silly me, I misread the article. Sorry, that's what I get for commenting in the wee hours."

So I re-read the article, and I can't see where it says that at all. The only mention of "keyboard" is in this section:

> As part of Samsung's desire to "improve" Android, they've created a "Clipboard History" function.

> It's pretty nifty. It shows you the last 20 items you copied - be they text or images. The only downside is that it only works if you're using the default Samsung Keyboard. (For iOS users - keyboards on Android are apps. You can swap them out if you want a better or different keyboard).

> If you don't use the Samsung Keyboard, items are still copied onto their clipboard - but you're unable to access them.

> Once you have copied around 20 items, the phone throws this error:...

When I read that, it seemed to be saying that the problem happens when you don't use the Samsung keyboard. That was the only way I could make sense of this: "The only downside is that it only works if you're using the default Samsung Keyboard... If you don't use the Samsung Keyboard, items are still copied onto their clipboard - but you're unable to access them. Once you have copied around 20 items, the phone throws this error:"

I still may have missed something, of course, but it's pretty unclear what the author means. Does the problem happen only with the Samsung keyboard? Only with other keyboards? Or what?

And now that I think about it, how would the input method selection affect the operation of the Copy action? Does Copy go through the input method at all? I get exactly the same select-text-and-Copy interaction regardless of what input method I've selected. Even if I select the Null Keyboard or Null Input Method, I still get exactly the same interaction for select and copy. This makes me suspect that the input method isn't involved in this interaction, although I don't know the Android architecture well enough to be sure.

aristidb• 13 years ago

Sad that every criticism of a phone operating system requires an explicit justification of not being biased.

edent2• 13 years ago

I'm used to it by now. Whenever I post a criticism, I try very carefully to make verifiable and repeatable claims with as much evidence (preferably video) as possible.

Even so, I've been accused of being a paid schill for Apple, Dell, Google, RIM, Nokia, Samsung, Sony and - on one memorable occasion - Panasonic!

I really wish I was in the pocket of all these companies - I'd be minted :-)

rogerbinns• 13 years ago

I highly recommend reading "The Saga of a CyanogenMod Exynos4 device maintainer" showing a history of dealing with Samsung, Samsung's tech practises and outright lies about their hardware, and repeated broken promises https://plus.google.com/101093310520661581786/posts/aoAGK5yo...

Jleagle• 13 years ago

My Galaxy Nexus doesn't do this, the author clearly has issues but shouldn't generalize so much.

veeti3• 13 years ago

Because this is an issue in Samsung's software. The Nexus devices run pure Android by Google.

ansible• 13 years ago

OK, I get that this is a bug. And it was reported a while ago. And it still hasn't been fixed. And yes, there have been other bugs by Samsung (and every other company, ever).

But please, does this bug really warrant "never trust Samsung", and "...Samsung's atrocious attitude to its customers..." and all that? I think someone needs to take a deep breath and try to calm down a little.

Here's the thing. There's a lot that goes into fixing even "simple" bugs for an existing product that is in production. Ideally, there is a lot of testing, and a lot of review for each and every fix.

In the case of mobile phones, there's even more hurdles, because the carrier has to approve the update too. They do their own testing, and it can take a while to get it pushed out. The carrier may be all up in your grill about other issues that you don't see (like something on the network side) that they prioritize over a clipboard bug that only affects users of alternate keyboards.

I don't know why a fix for this particular issue hasn't been pushed out yet. But there may be a good reason for that. Or a bad reason.

I'm not terribly impressed with some Samsung product divisions myself. My Bluray player does indeed play discs, but beyond that it is quite slow and crash-tastic. And my SK4G's original firmware was rather buggy. And my Nexus 10's video playback is a little glitchy.

Hmmm... maybe it is Samsung after all. At any rate, I don't know if there's a need to rant and rave about that though.

homosaur3• 13 years ago

Samsung makes gorgeous, inexpensive products but their software leaves a lot to be desired. I never understood the boosters of the GSIII, really. I can understand loving the hardware and the form factor but I booted it up once, saw the third party Android shell and put it back on the shelf.

I still don't get what manufacturers are thinking here. I know they want to differentiate their devices and have unique features but I've yet to see an Android shell that wasn't buggy, slow, and usually ugly.

Not only does their software suck, but it keep users from updating their phones. I suffered through this with the horrible worthless Motorola Photon 4G (don't buy Moto phones kids, they are garbage), a dual core piece of overpowered bugware they wouldn't bring to Android 4 because they were too lazy to rewrite their nearly worthless third party tools like Moto Blur.

Companies like Samsung and Motorola clearly cannot handle software development and should leave it to the pros instead of cluttering and messing up an attractive, usable interface.

timdorr• 13 years ago

It's funny you mention Motorola as an example of bad software, since Google owns them now. They're trying to maintain a separation between the two companies, and I guess that's a sign that it's working!

j452• 13 years ago

A low tolerance for Samsung may come from the high Apple like prices they charge for a phone like my Galaxy Note, and then no real updates for 6 months, and when one comes out, the Note 2 is released a few months later.

What I was not prepared for is Samsung is full of it when it comes to release dates for their software updates. Apple was bad in other ways, but the ability to get direct updates from the manufacturer is something I expect now because of the few years of iPhone I had.

To those who think it's simple enough to flash another rom on and get what I want -- my phone is not a toy, and my time is more valuable than constantly spending it in this way. I need the data in my phone, available and running at all times.

The fact that I'm first at Samsung's mercy, and then the carrier to get an official update while Google quietly pushes it's updates directly to it's devices has lead me to get a Nexus 4. I love my Galaxy note, but it's handicapped by not having the latest. Jellybean 4.2.1+ is for the first time an equivalent experience to iOS, and the Android 4.0.4 still has issues.

I hope that Samsung understands I appreciate and support their audacity in leading the charge into phablets, or flexible displays, but it really comes down to usability in software and it needs to be just as usable. I avoided the first two iPhones for this same reason.

Sadly, my Treo 650 still is more productive than these novelty purusing devices that provide more distractions than value. I am excited for the time our software skills move beyond creating novelty.

I hope Ubuntu's offerings become interesting enough moving forward.

homosaur3• 13 years ago

Note owners should be rightfully incensed. Also want to note that the Photon 4G is almost the exact same phone as the Verizon Droid X (pretty sure that's the model, too lazy to look) which DID get updates because V's model update schedule was behind Sprint's. They specifically only didn't update the Photon because they had a newer phone coming out on Sprint sooner. ICS works fine, I installed Cyanogen and can promise that it does. (with the exception that since no one owns a Photon, no one made a working ROM)

The bottom line is this, I've had one Android phone that was the best phone I've ever owned (better than the iPhone 3G even), which was the Nexus One. I sold my N1 to a friend and it's STILL IN SERVICE and works perfectly.

I've had two Androids that were two of the worst three phones I've ever used and those were the Samsung Moment and the Motorola Photon. I'm seeing a pattern here.

veeti3• 13 years ago

The title is wrong. There is no specific threshold for the bug: all that is known is that the clipboard crashes at some point if you use it and it becomes disabled until you wipe the /data/clipboard directory. (This directory doesn't exist in stock Android, so it's a problem with Samsung's software). Any attempt to copy something results in the app crashing.

Another possibly related problem is that spamming the setPrimaryClip function will cause a reboot. I haven't been able to cause the permanent lockup using this method, but running a program that runs an infinite loop seems to reboot the phone with 100% success.

You can see for yourself:

http://rojekti.fi/samsung.apk

Or if you don't trust random APK's off the internet (this one has no permissions, though), just write your own test app - it takes 5 minutes:

http://developer.android.com/reference/android/content/Clipb...

Once again, this doesn't happen in stock Android or on any other manufacturer's device.

JosephRedfern• 13 years ago

The title is still wrong. You can be using a Samsung phone with a custom ROM and not experience any issues. It's an issues with Samsung's ROM, not the hardware.

cooldeal• 13 years ago

I think that's too pedantic. The title is generally true for 99% of folks.

Car analogy: Headline: "Honda Civics prone to stalling".

You> Headline is wrong because if the Civic's engine is replaced with a Porsche engine, the problem does not occur.

The phones as sold to end users are subject to the bug.

lurkinggrue• 13 years ago

I have a galax note II and I can't reproduce this. I am using the samsung keyboard.

I am rooted though.

wslh3• 13 years ago

It seems like copy&paste are a challenging computer science problem [irony]. I remember how the crowd applauded when Steve Jobs presented this feature in iOS.

Fast forward a couple of years and even Google Chrome in Android has bugs in a textbox when you remove characters with backspace (it swaps characters, move the cursor).

lloeki• 13 years ago

> It seems like copy&paste are a challenging computer science problem [irony]

You have no idea. Issues that cross my mind:

- plain vs rich vs embedded: which one to paste, and at that time, if applicable, how to degrade one into the other? ask the original app, which knows the semantic? store multiple versions? store once, as-is, and hope the target app knows how to handle it, leading to inconsistencies?

- persistence across app life cycle: copy, close app, paste into other app. For years Linux, X or something simply could not do that and your paste would fail.

- UI concerns: it's easy to take the current, refined by the years way to handle clipboard for granted. remember how at some point some implementations required you to click a button on a damn toolbar. Notice how competing alternatives exist, such as X autofill with selection buffer pasted with middle click, xterm's left click to move left + right click to move right, OSX's growth of selection to the closest selection edge, or the infamous quick mode CMD.EXE way that gets copied with enter.

- security concerns: apps could be running with different levels of privilege, and you certainly don't want less privileged ones to have uncontrolled access to the clipboard buffer data, whose data may come from a more privileged source.

wslh3• 13 years ago

I know of these issues, but have been already solved. Look at the Microsoft Windows implementation for example:

> plain vs rich vs embedded

When you copy you have multiple formats that you can apply. The target can accepts many of them.

> persistence across app life cycle

shared memory

dobbsbob• 13 years ago

I buy google branded phones and make my own build. By not building all the junk my battery lasts almost 3days with average use which is pretty amazing for a nexus s. It would need constant recharging with the stock build

Samsung Copy and Paste Bug

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