Smartphones generate heat because of the tasks their components perform. The amount of heat generated is largely proportional to the amount of electricity moving through the phone.
When doing heavy activities with your phone such as playing games, the applications demand a lot from your central and graphics processing units. These units become warm as they use more power to serve your needs.
There are several reasons why a phone battery might overheat. It could be a software issue, hardware issue or sometimes a manufacturing issue like what happened with the Note 7. Sometimes even a simple damage to the battery resulting from a simple drop of your phone can be the one thing that kills it. The battery might heat up, short-circuit, expand and potentially explode.
Heating up is the main cause of battery fires and is usually closely related to charging. Charging a battery always results in heat generation and if the temperatures get too high then an internal short circuit can occur.
Smartphones manufactured today have become more susceptible to overheating because of tweaks made to enable things such as fast charging and newly added processors. There’s more heat in smartphones today than ever. Even design can be a major cause of overheating, especially when manufacturers try to fit big sized batteries in small size smartphones. A lot of things getting packed up at the back of your smartphone limits air flow and it continuously increases heat.
Must read: How to make your phone battery last longer
So, below is how you can prevent all the above from making your phone absorb a lot of heat than it can contain.
1. Use the correct charger: Different smartphones can be made by the same manufacturer but have different batteries and consequently require different amounts of power when charging. This is one of the reasons why chargers have their specs listed on them. Always use the exact charger the manufacturer intended to be used. Using a charger meant for a different device could overwhelm the battery and result into overheating and other consequences.
2. Turn off Wi-Fi or Mobile Data when the phone is not in use: Most apps continue running in the background and communicating over the internet. This keeps the phone running even when the owner isn’t using it which consumes more power resulting in overheating.
3. Close unused programs: Unused apps should always be closed because your phone will be using a lot of power whenever numerous programs are running which results in overheating.
4. Remove malware: Malware are programs built to run in the background without your knowledge. Whenever a smartphone owner is multitasking, these apps will be running side by side with the malware programs, hence demanding and consuming a lot of power which results in overheating. Getting rid of the malware can relax your “overheating” problems.
5. Update apps and firmware to the latest versions: OS and application updates are always made to improve on previous versions. Less power consuming updates should always be downloaded to avoid heavy power consuming versions that strain your smartphone causing it to overheat.
6. Unplug once charge is complete: It’s no secret that overcharging is a major cause of overheating. Each time a battery is getting charged, a lot of heat is generated. Leaving the battery on charge even when it’s full can cause overheating.
7. Charge in a safe place: A cool dry place is ideal for charging. A lot of heat is generated during charging and keeping the phone in a warm place such as ‘under a pillow’ only makes it worse.
8. Remove protective wear during charging: This protective wear, especially rubber manufactured wear suffocates the phone. It limits the phones ability to access air and cooling will be limited. You should always remove the case whenever you notice a considerable upward change in the temperature of your phone.
9. Avoid direct sunlight: Some phones, especially the dark ones absorb heat from the sun and shouldn’t be placed in direct sunlight such as next to a window or car dashboards.
10. Avoid pressure: Exerting too much pressure on your phone always limits the amount of air the phone can access, limiting its ability to cool. Avoid putting your phone in the back pocket and if you do, do not sit on it. Even putting your phone in your pockets while wearing tight clothes doesn’t allow room for the phone to cool.
11. Don’t turn your brightness up: A lot of power is required to illuminate all the light/bright pixels on your smartphone screen. Generating that power results into overheating if done for a long period of time. Always optimize the brightness of your phone to avoid overheating. Thankfully manufacturers like Huawei are working on artificial intelligent smartphones that understand how you use your brightness and optimize around that. An adaptive battery feature that studies your phone and prioritizes power for those apps you use most has been included in the latest version of Android codenamed ‘Pie’.
12. Install an app to monitor and cool down your app: Numerous free apps exist on the application stores that you can download to help cool down your apps. An example of such apps is the “DU Phone Cooler” that monitors your phone’s temperature in real time and analyzes which apps are causing the overheating.
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