2016 bug hits Windows phones

Windows Mobile is past its use-by date

Seems they used a 16-bit integer for the date on Windows Mobile. That would allow a device to have a 16 year life span.

Windows Mobile developed in 1992 as Windows CE (it was released 2 years later). Now its 2010. Exactly 16 years. Bam! It's lights out for Windows Mobile.

My Xperia X1 is not affected..

My Xperia X1 is a windows mobile 6.1 phone and it is not suffering from any such affliction.

So, bugs are spreading now?

What is the method of replication it is using to spread from some random Australian POS software to Windows phones?

not on my phone

I haven't noticed it on my phone, checked it and the date seems fine on mine.

Bollocks!

WinMo 6.1 vanilla here and every one I've received so far this year quite correctly says 2010.

If you actually *read* the linked article, it says specifically that it's not confined to WinMo devices and seems to affect all US carriers.

I wonder what's really at fault here?

Any ideas how?

Obviously there's some common dodgy code lurking about creating this problem, but I can't for the life of me figure out how you'd go about coding something that copes with dates up to 2010, but gives 2016 for 2010.

I imagine finding this in the code:

if (year > 2009) {

year = 2016; // Lolz!!!11 Jokezorz

}

A HEX on all your houses!

This is the work of witches I tells you!

The year of twenty 0x10 is upon ye!!!

Nope

HTC Topaz running 6.5 Build 21896.5.0.82

Last message read 01/04/2010 (Must remember to change date settings to UK at some point...)

Hex/Dec

Sounds to me like someone see 0d10 as 0x10 and convert it to 0d16.... then put a 0d20 front...

Not me either

Unfortunately it means I've just admitted to owning a WinMo phone.

hmm

Was the software for the banks also written by Microsoft by any chance? Could they have reused code from WM?

All fine here

All fine on my phone as well.

Oddness

Went round to a mate's house last night to look at a Windows XP box that was having trouble.

Date on that was 2016 as well.

Mind you, it was virus-laden.

Paris, because she hasn't got a clue either.

nope..

my xperia is working fine

Mine works fine

Got an Omnia 2 running WM 6.5 and all the dates are fine

Its the real time clock chip

This problem has hit some RISC OS computers which have a Dallas real time clock chip rather than a Philips one. It's down to the clock chip returning the date in binary coded decimal rather than plain binary. it worked up to now as the values 0-9 are the same in both schemes, but 10 is 0x10 in BCD rather than 0x0A, which the clock code has incorrectly read as 16, hence thinking it's 2016.

touch pro2 6.5

not affected :/

and i was kinda thinking cool :( bummed out now .....

Wait ill try holding my phone upside down and see if it works !!!!

*thumbs up :P

Which phones have this problem?

My HTC Touch is unaffected.

Nope!

No such problem on my HTC HD2 running Winmo 6.5. Has ANYONE had this problem on a Winmo phone?

Who on Earth came to this conclusion?

Evil Bunnies

Its the bunnies .. they've gotten in an nibbled at the carroty goodness in the airwaves and corrupted the data !!! its TRUE!

Oh well....

Just another nail in the coffin for Windows Mobile

Mogul (HTC Titan)

Yup... The phone says 2010, the SMSes say 2016. Since my phone has been flashed to a 3rd party carrier (MetroPCS), and I have a different SMS/MMS client installed, I don't think it's WinMO. I wonder if it's a time hack from the wireless network.

Phew

Thank goodness that it's just a Windows bug on some phones. I started to get really worried for a moment when I received a message from 2016 saying, "Please help - Shut down the Large Hadron Collider - The Portal has opened - agggghh"

Smirk Smirk

As one who bears the indelible scars from a Y2K project, I wait with deep interest to find out what caused this one