How to Deal With an Overheating Smartphone

What causes overheating? You’ve felt it before, on more counts than you’d actually care to remember. How many times have you used an electric device and felt it heating up during usage? It happens to everything from computers and phones to kitchen appliances. But we’re kind of use to the notion of devices with moving parts or computers working on demanding tasks heating up, but overheating phones often catch people off guard, especially if the temperature goes beyond the safe range. Then it’s not a case of your phone being unpleasant to use or slow - it can damage your device or even cause it to catch fire or actually explode. So let’s take a deeper look at the nature of this issue and how to solve it.

Common Causes

Our phones use electricity to run all systems and enable the central processing unit (CPU) to carry out the necessary functions. When activities housed in the central system-on-a-chip (SoP) become overloaded, the CPU slows down hence the occasional long waits for phones to process data and perform operations. This is especially common in android phones with a lower RAM memory capacity. This also has a side-effect: CPU generates heat as it works. Bigger the workload = more heat. Many of us are used to this notion with our computers, but in those we have fans or even intricate liquid cooling systems. But with phones we went a long way to make them as compact as possible, which makes venting excess heat harder.

Graphically intense apps or apps requiring continuous and difficult calculations, such as high-end video games, HD video streaming services and so on, can easily overload your system and cause your phone to overheat. Special case must be made for viruses and malware - viruses and miners abuse your phone’s resources for their malicious intents even if you’re not doing anything demanding with your phone.

Other than overloading the CPU through performing different actions and operations, there are also a number of other reasons known to cause overheating to phones. Heating issues might be brought through the external environment in relation to environmental temperatures. When the phone is directly exposed to sunlight or extreme temperatures, you might receive a warning message to let your phone cool down. Though unless your phone has other heat-related issues, this would be solved by simply moving your phone.

The heat may also come from different parts, such as bluetooth or WiFi modules. When using them for a long time they’re known to heat up as well - not to a dangerous level, but they can contribute to overall issue. A very special case is having a faulty battery - those can cause the worst and most damaging cases of overheating, not only when the phone is used, but also while it’s charging.

How to Deal With an Overheating Phone

Now that we’ve addressed the question “why does your phone get hot”, it’s about time to look at measures to take to prevent and/or grapple with an already overheated device? Is your iPhone really hot and you don’t know what causes the overheating? Is your phone battery getting hot on a frequent basis and you still haven’t stemmed out the root of the problem? Hope the following tips help you tussle with your situation.

It’s always advised not to allow our devices to stay for too long on the chargers. As a matter of fact, experts advise phone buyers to only charge their phones to 80% during the day and only extend to 100% at night when the phones aren’t in use.Better to stick with 80% at all times for increased longevity of your battery life. In the same effect, don’t let your battery life drop too low reaching critical levels - while not critically bad, it’s not optimal.

When charging a phone, place it on top of a hard and cool surface as opposed to a sofa or bed. This is because the ‘clothed’ surfaces will only act to trap heat which worsens the situation. Similarly, if your phone got too heated for any reason don’t hurry to hide it in your pocket or bag - being exposed to air is the best solution here. But don’t place it into an actively cold place, like a fridge. Rapid changes of temperature put strain on the materials and can damage them - plus it may cause moisture to manifest on parts of the device. Just place your device in an open space away from sunlight. If it’s possible you might also want to remove its panels.

Dealing with the main offender - the CPU - might require a bit more of a personal touch. You need to look over how you use your device, how many apps you have running at the same time, how many connection methods are on (cellular, bluetooth, WiFi, 3G, 4G). When playing a game that requires a ton of processing from the SoP you might want to turn off some working in the background. Remember to reboot your phone from time to time. Also remember your cybersecurity tips and check your phone for possible malware if it might be at fault. Updating your apps might also help, as the developers might patch out certain bugs that overworked your phone for no reason.

But always remember than you can only do so much on your own. You can check online if other people with your phone model are having the same issues. If you’re using your phone responsibly but keep having heat-related issues that are not common for your device, then it’s time to contact the manufacturer or the service centre. You might have a defective battery or other hardware and the sooner you take care of it the better.

Conclusion

Future trends in phone technology are promising as newer models are being integrated with ‘internal-cooling-pipes’ that run to the processing unit. These trends will ensure the issue of overheating phones is a thing of the past. Until such models are actually a reality, the safety measures above will go a long way to secure your phone from getting easily overheated. Last but not least, you might also consider a phone upgrade if you are the ‘all-time surfer or gamer’ and just can’t help it.

Since that’s done with, what are the other annoying menaces that you’ve found out drains your battery life? Join the discussion in the comment box as we share more remedies on the same.