Code Benders

Posted by Taus April 28, 2010

Earlier this week, I wrote about the a crazy bug in the Android email app that I discovered on my Nexus One, which posed a significant privacy risk when users send emails from their device. I submitted the bug report to Google and earlier today I received a reply. The email (below) includes instructions to resolve the issue, including clearing the email app data and cache.

While I’m delighted to get such a quick reply, I can’t help but to think that the Android development team must have known about the bug for some time. The reply below gives no indication that this is a known issue. But it also does not request any further detail, which I assume they would have requested if they were unfamiliar with the bug. I did search the Android Code site, but I could not find a known issue.

If you’ve seen this occur on your device, please add comments/details to Android Code site here.

“Hello Michael,

Thank you for your email. We understand you are facing issues with your
email app.

To resolve this issue, please try the following:

- Perform a hard reset
1. Remove the battery from your phone.
2. Wait 15 seconds.
3. Replace your battery and try turning on your phone again.

- Clear cache of the Email application
1. Go to Settings > Applications > Manage applications
2. Press the Menu button and select ‘Filter’
3. Select ‘All’
4. Select the problematic application
5. Click ‘Clear data’ and ‘Clear cache’

- Uninstall any third-party applications that might be impacting the Email
application

1. Go to Settings > Applications > Manage applications
2. Press the Menu button and select ‘Filter’
3. Select ‘All’
4. Select the problematic application
5. Click ‘Uninstall’

If are still seeing inclusion of a separate email, you may need to do a
factory data reset

1. Go to Settings > Privacy > Factory data reset
2. Click ‘Reset phone’
3. Your phone will restart
4. After resetting your phone, you will need to re-sign in to your Google
account and re-download all of your apps

Please reply to this email if your issue remains unresolved after these
steps.

Sincerely,

XXXXX
The Google Team”

Posted by Taus April 26, 2010

I picked up my Nexus One pretty soon after it was release earlier this year. I knew going in that there was a good chance that the device would have bugs. But I figured after several commercial distributions through other handset makers that the risk was pretty small. After all this is Android 2.0 we’re talking about.

Since picking up the device I’ve had several complaints about minor bugs. But I was jaw-dropping shocked last week when I discovered an email glitch that should cause any Android user concern if they use their device to send email.

So here’s the details. A week ago, I received an email from “Laura”. I replied to that email and then received another reply from her. When I scrolled down through the body of her reply I found the body of totally different email appended to this email. The appended text was placed inline just after my reply. Where this get really strange is that the appended text came from an email that I sent to another person (i.e., Laura was not a recipient of that email). In essence, Android’s email app is randomly pulling text from email and inserting in to another email.

I wanted to test the bug, so I forwarded an email to Matt and it happened again. Below is a screen shot from Matt’s iPhone showing the email that he received from me. The subject of the email is correct. But the body of the email is the body text from an email that I sent a week or two earlier. Creepy.

What I don’t know is whether this is a pervasive bug across all Android devices or whether this is a problem that is unique to my device. So if you’ve experienced something similar, add a comment here.

Interestingly, when I look at the email in the Sent folder sometimes my device will display the erroneous text and sometimes it displays the text I was trying to send.

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