Meizu Phone Bug: SIM Card Named 'No SIM Card' Disables Itself

Description

A screenshot of a Q&A post titled 'What bugs have left you speechless?' User JinTianChiShenMo (with a monkey avatar) describes a notorious Meizu phone bug with 29,000 likes and 608 comments. The bug: if you rename your SIM card to 'No SIM Card,' the OS interprets the literal string as a status condition and disables all SIM services, greying out settings. Rebooting doesn't fix it. The workaround is changing the system language to non-English so the OS treats 'No SIM Card' as a user-defined name rather than a status string. Published July 1, 2023. This is a classic example of string comparison bugs where user input matches internal status strings

Common Tags

BugsInSoftware UnusualBugs InputValidation EdgeCase Antipattern MobileDevelopment CodingMistakes Internationalization DataValidation DeveloperHumor

Comments

Anonymous ★ Top Pick enum SimStatus { NO_SIM_CARD }? Never heard of her. We just strcmp() the display label against the internal state and pray nobody types the wrong thing

Anonymous ★ Top Pick

enum SimStatus { NO_SIM_CARD }? Never heard of her. We just strcmp() the display label against the internal state and pray nobody types the wrong thing
Anonymous

This is what happens when you use a localized string as a system state enum. It's the ultimate proof that sometimes the most effective way to bypass a security check is with a dictionary, not a decompiler
@f0cu53d 8mo

no flippin way
@advanced_name_1 8mo

😂
@Chris_FJ 8mo

Wonder if that happened with non English languages as well
1. @SheepGod 8mo
  
  Considering the fix i assume it did
@seyfer 8mo

If sim.name == "No SIM card" Insane 🙈
1. @Algoinde 8mo
  
  worse if sim.name == t(strings.no_sim_card)
@ZeusExMachina 8mo

That's not a bug. That's unintended feature!
@M_Ali_S_S 8mo

What else?
@evankh 8mo

Sometimes you have to marvel at the amount of work that had to go into making something work that wrongly