Your phone is essentially an extension of your arms and legs, acting as your main source of communication with family, friends, colleagues, and even potential customers. For that reason, you’re probably on it all the time.

As you use your phone more and more, you might start to notice that your device is getting a bit warm to the touch. There are many reasons why your phone might start to take on a higher temperature. Let’s take a look at some of the possible causes as well as what you can do to fix them.

Why Is It Bad for a Phone To Overheat?

Your phone has internal fans to help cool down the internal components if they ever heat up too much. But it’s crucial to make sure that your phone does not overheat entirely.

A phone that gets too hot is at risk of becoming damaged. The battery can start to degrade, and you might even melt your phone’s processor, which will make it stop working. Frequent overheating can also reduce performance and degrade the battery. The last thing you want is for your phone screen to turn black one day and never turn back on. 

What Causes a Phone to Overheat?

The reason your phone starts to feel warm to the touch is that it starts to use more energy in order to function properly. Where there is energy, there is also heat. In most cases, the internal fans can cool your phone down, but certain factors can make it harder for your phone to stay chilled.

Overuse of Your Device

Your phone might be overheating just because you’ve been constantly using it for a while. Things that require constant energy from your phone, like playing games or streaming videos, are particularly taxing on your CPU. Be sure to give your phone a break every now and then to let it cool down.

Poor Signal

If your phone can’t find a solid cell signal, it will continue to look for the nearest cell tower to enhance its connection. This can be tolling for your device, which can eventually lead it to overheat.

Your phone puts in double-duty work to try to find the nearest cell tower or Wi-Fi network to ensure that you can keep using your device without interruption. This is a major reason why your phone might start to feel hot, especially if you notice that you have poor service.

Running Too Many Apps

Every time you open an app and start asking your phone to do something, it will need to work a touch harder. If you leave your apps running without closing them out, your phone needs to put in some extra work to save all of that data.

Every open app in the background uses your phone’s memory (RAM). The more apps you have that are actively open, the higher the energy demand. This not only drops the efficiency of your device but also causes your phone to get super hot as you use it.

Frequently app updates help your programs run more efficiently. Check the app store to see if you might have missed an update notification.

Software updates can help prevent bugs that could degrade the efficiency and performance of your device. But as a rule of thumb, try to close out unused apps as often as you can to avoid issues. Uninstall any you don’t plan on using again. 

Charging

Charging your phone requires energy to amp up the juice of your battery. This can naturally cause some heat on your device and make it feel warm to the touch.

Using a wireless charger can make your phone feel especially hot. This is because the energy generated with a wireless charger gets transmitted to your phone’s battery all at once rather than with a wired charging cable. This energy gets converted into heat, which increases your phone’s temperature.

Wireless chargers charge your phone much more quickly than a wired charger, though it will likely cause your phone to become hot to the touch. This doesn’t affect your phone’s performance, so you don’t need to worry.

Malware or Viruses

Your iPhone doesn’t allow any non-Apple software to be downloaded on your phone. This makes it hard for customization, but it does make it virtually impossible for a scammer or a hacker to compromise your device. However, Android devices aren’t as defensive. If you click on a suspicious link or download suspicious software, it might lead to a virus on your device. Antivirus software might be able to help; download with caution if your phone doesn’t come with a malware detector (like the newer Samsungs do). 

Malware runs in the background and monitors your usage, trying to gain access to your personal information like credit cards or bank account log-ins. This software uses a lot of power and energy, so it can make your phone feel hot as the hacker tries to steal your information.

Sun Exposure

Your phone might become hot to the touch purely because of an external heat source, like the sun. If you leave your phone out in direct sunlight for too long, it will naturally start to overheat since its internal cooling units won’t be able to work fast enough.

Sun exposure is one of the easiest ways to fry the internal components of your device, as well as external accessories like your phone case or the metal components of your phone. Don’t leave your phone in a hot car; take it with you. If you go outside, keep your phone inside your backpack or pocket to avoid excessive heat. 

When your phone leaves the normal temperature zone, you should get a temperature warning. How hot is too hot? Generally, environments hotter than 95 degrees Fahrenheit are too hot for most mobile devices. Your phone will likely drain its battery and then shut down when faced with high temperatures. 

How To Cool Down Your Phone

If your cell phone is starting to overheat, there are a few things you can do to try to cool it down nice and quick.

First, remove your external case. Smartphones are built with dissipating heat in mind, but your case will trap the heat and raise the overall internal temperature of your device. Taking your case off can expedite the process.

It might be wise to turn your phone off for a few minutes to stop whatever internal processes are causing your phone to get so hot. Once it feels like your phone has cooled down, you can turn it back on.

Next, try to turn your screen brightness down as low as you can. The lower your screen’s brightness, the less energy it’s going to use. This can help your phone cool down even if you need to continue to use it.

Put it in airplane mode, stop running apps, and favor a static background instead of animated widgets. Turn off Bluetooth, GPS, and Wi-Fi — all of these can contribute to a phone overheating. 

Something you should not do is put your device in a refrigerator to try to cool it down from overheating. A rapid temperature change can cause moisture to form inside your phone, damaging your product beyond repair.

How To Prevent Your Phone From Overheating

The best way to let your phone cool down is to prevent it from overheating in the first place. There are a few ways you can work to prevent your phone from becoming too hot.

Firstly, regularly close out apps that you are no longer using. This frees up memory (RAM) and makes it so that your device isn’t overworking as you continue to use it. You can even download apps that remove junk apps running in the background without you realizing it.

Next, keep your phone out of the sun and heat. Not only does this easily make your phone get warm, but it can also drain your battery life and downgrade the phone’s performance. 

The charger you use can affect how phones perform in terms of heat output. Some charging ports and cables, usually cheaper ones that you might buy second-hand, are not made with quality materials. These can cause some overheating issues.

Final Review 

It’s common for a smartphone to overheat, especially when you’ve been using it for long periods of time. Other things can cause an increase in temperature, like running too many apps, poor signal, wireless chargers, or even sun exposure.

While a tiny bit of heat is nothing to worry about, prolonged overheating can damage the internal components of your phone and decrease its performance. The best way to prevent your phone from overheating is by monitoring how many apps are running in the background and using a quality charger to give your device more juice.

Data Protection Is Data Protection

You can take steps to prevent overheating by preventing hackers and scammers from installing malware into your device. You can do this with a second Burner number to keep your personal number private.

Burner lets you make outgoing calls with a second number so that no one ever knows your personal one, and if someone ever tries to call your Burner number, they never see your personal digits. It’s perfect for online dating, buying and selling on Craigslist, and even getting a second number for your business.

Get a second Burner number in any area code today.

Sources:

What is CPU? Meaning, Definition, and What CPU Stands For | FreeCodeCamp

How Does Wireless Charging Work? | Youngzine Science

Hackers & Scammers | SafetyNet

What to Do If Your Phone Is Overheating | PCMag