Smartphones have become vital to our daily lives at this point. Everything from work emails to personal calls goes through these tiny slabs we carry in our pockets.
However, all that tech compacted into such a small form factor is bound to overheat. As you use your phone more and more, it’ll overheat, as most of you might have experienced during a long video call or during those gaming sessions.
In this article, we’re looking at why smartphones overheat and what you can do to prevent it from happening.
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Why do smartphones overheat?
Considering everything is okay with your phone, there are two reasons your phone might overheat — heavy usage, charging or environmental factors.
Besides these, phones can overheat for several reasons, including but not limited to the following.
- Buggy apps
- Outdated OS
- Presence of malware on the device
- Heavy network activity
- Prolonged camera use
- Heat caused by phone case
How to stop your phone from overheating?
Here are some methods you can try out for cooling your phone down.
Cut down on the usage
If you’re using your phone and feel it overheating, stop using it and keep it aside, preferably in a cool room or under shade if you’re out and about. More often than not, heavy usage can cause phones to overheat. If you’ve got Bluetooth, WiFi, or mobile data enabled, try disabling it until your phone cools down.
Check the charger and charger cable
Thanks to the increasingly higher wattage of newer fast charging adaptors, most phones heat up while charging. Try replacing the charger or the cable to see if that brings the heat build-up down.
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Check for malware
If your phone is overheating without excessive usage and running slow, there’s a chance there might be some malicious background process running on your device that’s causing heat. In such cases, it’s good to check and see if there are any unrecognised apps on your phone. If there are, immediately delete them and factory reset your phone as a precaution.
Take off your case
Big, bulky cases protect your phone just fine, but when you excessively use your phone, the resulting heat has nowhere to go and gets trapped between the case and the phone, causing it to overheat faster. If your phone is overheating, remove the case and don’t use it for some time until the device cools down.
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Environmental factors
If you’re out using your phone to take pictures on a hot sunny day, chances are your phone will heat up thanks to the heat from the sun and heat generated by the phone’s use combined. Most phones have metal bodies that can also heat up rather quickly. If that’s the case, step inside and let your phone cool down a bit.
Remove unnecessary apps
Other than hogging your storage, having too many apps also affects your device’s day to day performance. Most if not all apps have some background process running all the time, causing extra workload on the phone and hence, the possibility of overheating.
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