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Earlier this year someone found an exploit that would make Apple phones repeatedly crash when they received a text message with a particular string of characters.
For a few hours it was hilarious, as offices gleefully downed tools to send the bug to their mates and chortle at the proceeding rage. Then it got annoying. Apple released a fix, and we all started acting our age again.
Mercifully, a new opportunity to regress with some childish tech fiddling has presented itself in the form of a neat Android exploit.
Word has spread after Antonio Villas Boas of Business Insider published details of the feature which slows down a phone's animations to infuriating degrees.
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Here's a step-by-step guide to unleashing the snail hack on your friend's phone:
1. Wait for your friend (soon to be "former friend") to leave their phone unlocked. Head to settings.
2. Search (with the magnifying glass icon) for "About" or "About phone".
3. You should be provided with a bunch of options to read up on the inner workings of the phone.
4. You're looking for "Build number", which could be sitting under menus including "Software information". Once you've found it, keep tapping it until the message "You're now a developer!" appears - like so
Success! Your Android software is now open to developer tricks (something Apple isn't anywhere near as open about). Now it gets a bit complicated.
5. In settings, search for "Developer options".
6. Under "Input", have a dig around for "Window animation scale" (it might sit under the heading "Animations")
7. Find "Transition animation scale" and "Animator duration scale". These control how quickly the software plays various animations, scrolls and screen flips.
8. Set all options to "10x"
OR - you could be smarter. If you have easy access to a friend's phone, you could start off by slowing this down to 1.5x. The next day, 2x. By 5x they might have started to notice their phone slowing down, without any predictable cause. When you make them hit 10x, they might lose the will to live. Or just buy a new phone, it depends how balanced they are as a human being.
When it looks like they can't take it any more, present yourself as an Android wizard and tell them you're aware of a sure-fire fix. Don't show them what you're doing and reset the speeds to 1x.
Accept their praise as a guru of smartphones, ask for a cup of tea (two sugars) and bask in the glow of a prank well played.
[Via: Business Insider]
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