The Mysterious “Special” iPhone Status Bar

Here are two iPhone home screens. On the left, my iPhone home screen from a few months ago. Everything normal.

On the right, my iPhone home screen from yesterday. And something weird has happened.

An additional line has been added to the status bar at the top, pushing all the app icons closer together. It displays only the characters “O2’ – the name of my British network provider. Which is already displayed, of course, in the main part of the status bar. What, as they say, the frak?

The extra line appears to have no function, doesn’t interfere with any apps, and remains visible on all app screens as you flick from left to right.

Suspicious, I asked some friends and the Twitterverse if anyone had seen anything similar. No-one had.

But some searching around showed I wasn’t the first to see something like this. Last August, a user at the MacRumors forums posted a screenshot of a similar problem. In his case, the unwanted additional text said “Special”.

All of which leaves me somewhat bemused. What is this line, and why does it only appear for a few people? And under what circumstances?

I wonder: is this a hidden feature waiting to appear in some future software update? Or is it just a bug in one of the apps I’ve installed? Is it just me and the guy on MacRumors? Have you seen this weirdness? Let us know in the comments.

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