Copy-Paste Bug in Samsung Phones Discovered

The recent news surrounding Samsung’s Copy-Paste bug has validated my suffering for the past few months. Apparently, Samsung device owners (like me) have discovered a very frustrating and unacceptable bug in their devices. It was a Samsung Tab 7.7 for my case. When I use the native Samsung TouchWiz copy feature a certain number of times, the phone or tablet will crash. In addition, it was said that the affected devices reportedly require a factory reset in order to perform copy and paste again.

I am not prepared to do this solution as it’s just painful, and unproductive. I will have to re-install the application, not forgetting data that I have painstakingly created in my tablet over the months. Yes, you can restore, but there are risks that backup-restore entails. According to some report, the issue was discovered sometime last year, and apparently doesn’t occur on all devices. The main suspect/culprit would likely be the TouchWiz that came with the Samsung device (mine a tablet). The bug affects Android versions 3.0 to 4.1, so that means Samsung had been dragging its feet and not fixing this for all devices over the past months/year, despite their multiple updates to TouchWiz interface codes.

How was the bug discovered? A user named Veeti Paananen observed that “Samsung devices running TouchWiz and Android 3.0 or higher have a fatal clipboard bug that can cause it to become permanently unusable until a factory reset. It seems to occur randomly. Whenever a user tries to copy something, this error occurs in the system ClipboardManager class: java.lang.NullPointerException at  android.content.ClipboardManager.setPrimaryClip(ClipboardManager.java:146).”

Each time I try to copy/cut, the application (may it be a chrome, or word processor, or note application) that I use will hang, and then crash. I understand that the only fix for this is to perform a factory reset (which may recur again) or to clear the contents of /data/clipboard as a rooted user. I have detailed how I rooted my Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.7 device successfully in my earlier post here: 10 Easy Steps to Root Galaxy Tab 7.7 (P6800)