Slashdot Mirror
Some Overheating 3GS iPhones Glow Pink
Hugh Pickens writes "The Telegraph reports that dozens of users of the recently released iPhone 3GS have reported overheating issues, with some iPhone owners unable to pick up the device because the handset gets so hot to the touch, while others say the casing turns pink with the heat. 'I am definitely experiencing issues with the iPhone running warm and quick battery life lost,' writes Tom Goldstein on one discussion board. 'The phone seems to warm up almost immediately if I am doing anything that pulls data over the network.' Some users have said the device has been too hot to put to their ear while making a phone call, and others say the overheating seems to occur when owners are using the iPhone's mapping software, which uses the handset's built-in GPS technology. Melissa J. Perenson writes at PC World: 'I became aware the handset had become very hot. Very, very hot — not just on the back, but the entire length of the front face, too.' Some gadget experts believe faulty batteries could be the cause of overheating and poor battery life. 'My guess is there's going to be a whole lot of batteries affected because these [iPhones] are from very large production runs,' said Aaron Vronko, who fixes iPods and iPhones. 'If you have a problem in the design of a series of batteries, it's probably going to be spread to tens of thousands [of device], if not hundreds of thousands, and maybe more.'"
Simple logic shows these claims to be provably false:
1. 'teh iPhone' is 'teh Best Thing Ever'
2. 'teh Best Thing Ever' obviously doesn't overheat and discolour
Therefore
'teh iPhone' doesn't overheat and discolour.
QED
My Android G1 - normally cool (in the thermal sense) heats quickly when using GPS for sustained periods. It doesn't become uncomfortable to hold or to use but it's definitely noticable. My bet is that the iPhone problem is also GPS related.
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
Apple can just deal with this like everyone else, right? You know, send a whole bunch of batteries to the retail stores, and those affected can come in, pop off the back of the phone, replace the battery, and drop off the old one. No need to send the phone back or anything.
It's a pony-phone!
Media that can be recorded and distributed can be recorded and distributed.
-kfg
... testing anyone?
It seems Apple has a hard time learning that electronics cause heat and that this heat needs to be led away from the device.
I can remember several cases ( MacBooks, iMacs, what have you) where they've had overheating issues ... pretty sloppy engineering if you ask me.
---
"The chances of a demonic possession spreading are remote -- relax."
Having just upgraded from the first iPhone to the 3GS I have to say I am disappointed with the battery life on the new handset, it's certainly not the improvement I was expecting from reviews. With Wi-Fi and location services turned off and very light usage I can get just about 2 days out of it, normal use sees it being recharged every night which is inferior to the old model. I was contemplating returning it to O2 but before I did that I wanted to know if there are any standard tests to see if my battery is that much worse than normal, e.g. the phone plays a movie for 5.5 hours at 75% brightness or play music through headphones for 9 hours from full charge etc. Any thoughts? Reviews also seemed to suggest there was a better battery meter in this model but I haven't seen it, 20% charge remaining still seems to mean run for a recarger, not you have 20% of the usage time you would get from a full charge left.
I think there is a software issue that causes something to start draining power at a crazy rate non-stop. I turned on the percentage battery indicator on my 3gs and one day I noticed it was running kind of hot and I looked at the indicator and saw the battery % had gotten crazy low really fast so I just set the phone down and watched.
I was losing like 1% every minute while running nothing other than the OS itself. WTF? That's like under 2 hour battery life while doing NOTHING but staring at the home screen -- you're supposed to be able to watch video for 6-7 hours, right?
So I powered my phone off completely, then let it reboot. Whatever it was, it went away. After that it ran smooth, no extra heat, battery indicator stayed at the same percent as I stared at homescreen for 5+ minutes and it was perfectly fine for the rest of the day. No clue what happened there, but something was draining power non-stop until I rebooted the thing. I assume it wasn't the processor, because it wasn't locked up -- so perhaps it was a modem issue.
It's quite possible that had I not noticed this issue and rebooted my phone I might have ended up with a pink one as well.
Apple obviously designed the iPhone 3GS to be cooled by pure Apple fanboyism. People having problems obviously aren't the true believers.
iPhone owner checklist:
* Are you making sure to bring up your iPhone in EVERY single conversation no matter how irrelevant it is to what you are talking about?
* Are you making sure you are holding your iPhone in the most BLATANTLY OBVIOUS way possible in all public places?
* Are you flaming each and every single post on the Net that dares to criticize the iPhone?
* Are you making good use of your mod points on Net messageboards and BURY the Apple unbelievers?
Making sure you are doing your part should keep your precious iPhone perfectly safe and as pristine as the glorious moment you saw Steve Jobs on stage cradle it in his hands.
The iphone just isn't cool anymore.
If you need to cook your food in the wilderness or light a campfire, there's an app for that...
'it isn't a bug, it's a feature'
Absolutely! This is just more Apple-hating propaganda. Everyone in the iPhone community knows this is an auto-repair feature, designed to weld together all those cracks in the casing.
It is just that all testing is done by a team of Eskimos. iNuit to be precise.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
The iPhone was supposed to be used by cool people who can easily take the heat.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Sounds like a fairly straight forward case of there being a few dodgy units out there to me - not exactly the biggest surprise when you consider the number of units produced and the short development/testing cycles people have to get new gadgets out these days. Apple aren't the only ones this sort of thing has happened to and they certainly won't be the last.
Watching all the fanbois go up in flames (bah-dum-tish) was however pure internet entertainment!
"nuh-huh didn't happen!"
"they are using it wrong"
"its normal!! laptops can browse the internet and gets hot - the iphone can browse the internet and gets hot. Same thing innit?"
"it's cos of the mega-fast hardware - it just shows how awesome it is"
"YOU'RE ALL JEALOUS!!"
As I expect there will be some of the same along here shortly I'll grab some popcorn :)
I am about to file a bug report to a Symbian beta software because I busted it using amazing amounts of CPU if it changes the wireless network while other network it was connected is doing kinda OK with 30-40 percent levels.
It is more like Apple OS X scheme of things, access point groups. Issue comes from application since it has its own access points code. Doesn't use system's built in.
How could I figure the huge CPU load? Simple, battery went hot and died in hours. It is like old fashion way of figuring CPU load.
What I mean is don't eliminate CPU immediately, they are portable devices running portable CPU which was never designed for 24/7 full CPU load.
What we need is, some heroic blog hack the iPhone 3G, install standard UNIX tools (ps) and run ps -aux (or top) whenever it gets hot. I am NOT suggesting it to actual iPhone 3GS owners. You bought it, report bug to Apple using http://bugreporter.apple.com/ . Duplicate reports are always welcome at Apple, they work like ''vote''.
Well, you _can_ pick it up.
It just burns stuck in your hand so you can't let go of it. Definitely a feature!
Plus, you smell like bacon!
Why don't these people just put in a new battery?
Http://suregottold.com
iPhones Glow Pink
From what I hear about Apple fanboys this will be seen as an advantage.
Still, I've yet to find a phone that doesn't do this.
Maybe the manufacturers need to realize that many users will user their devices as advertised, and not at the designed-for minimal usage patterns. Some people actually will stream a video, just like the ads say you can; they won't just make calls, take photos, and SMS their friends. Manufacturers need to reconsider their expectations for actual current draw, and include routines and hardware to check for excessive heat and runaway processes drawing too much juice.
Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
I encountered the same issue when I was working on a low-end 2G phone. The problem was related to the DSP coprocessor. The plastic case almost melted after overheating for a night during a test campain. The device seemed to work OK after that. The problem is that maybe some components were harmed and it could cause some random failures afterwards. I would definetely ask for a new device after such overheating.
well take a quick look around at other smart phones. some 80% of them are what? black.
there are silver ones and a few random other colours but most are black.
No the only thing apple should be ashamed of is poor battery design and over clocking the processor to make idiots happy.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
anyone try iPhone eggs yet?
btw apple, black sucks, it absorbes heat in the sun shine.
How often do you leave your phone out in direct sunlight? And black radiates heat better, so in the shade it will cool down faster.
I've got a white 32GB iPhone 3GS, and no problems that severe. If I'm in extended use of the GPS/compass it does get warmer to the touch, as it will also do on lengthy phone calls (15 minutes plus or so). It also gets warmer when (surprise) playing games for an extended period. It hasn't gotten uncomfortably hot, nor has there been any discoloration so far.
As far as software issues, the only major one I've seen so far is that the Jawbone Prime headset I'd been using as my main headset has been having trouble with this phone - it disassociates sometimes and the button sequence to turn off the headset LED doesn't work anymore. My other headset (a Jabra 530) works fine so I've been using it.
Battery life has been pretty good so far - from my unscientific study it seems a little better than the 3G I had before that my wife now uses. Game playing drops it faster than voice or data, and web surfing does use more juice on 3G than on wifi.
There were a lot of BT and power management issues in the initial release of 2.0 last year. It took Apple a couple of releases over the first month or two to get things all the way right, and I suspect we'll have a couple of fast releases now as well.
The Apple trend with every new OS release (Mac or iPhone) is basically this:
- Limited public testing if any. Code freeze about a month before shipping.
- Initial bugfix release (.01) 2-4 weeks after the product shipped, with all the glaring bugs that they found after freeze addressed. This rarely has any problems found in initial public release addressed unless they're super-critical.
- About 2 months after release we get a .02 version that covers the main issues found after they got the product into public release. By this time the software is pretty solid - subsequent point releases during the product lifetime will add occasional minor features but mainly fix performance issues and/or security holes. Almost all the releases afterwards will be in the first 6-8 months when it's an iPhone OS - roughly 4 months before the next year's new OS version Apple will abandon the current one and concentrate on the announcements for the coming year.
So next February or so Apple will stop fixing 3.0 in preparation for 4.0 which will be announced around March and ship around June.
They basically do the same thing with the desktop OS - just the overall life cycle is longer. but the initial freeze/release/patch1/patch2 cycle applies there as well and on roughly the same timing.
So basically what I'm saying is that the problems that some 3GS users are having (but not me) are assuredly legit, and will likely be addressed in one of the first two bug-fix software releases for the phone. The first release will probably come in the next week or two and may address it - and within 1-2 months it will almost certainly be taken care of through power management. Not to mention that I'm sure my Bluetooth issue will be fixed as well. You get used to this. At least modern phones (iPhone, Android, Palm Pre) can and do now regularly get software updates to address issues.
I remember an era BI (before iPhone) where the carriers controlled software tightly, and the cell companies rarely or never released patches. There's no real good reason why Windows Mobile phones virtually never get OS updates for the installed base, or why the PalmOS Treos would take over a year to fix minor issues. Now that's properly in the hands of the vendors, where it belongs.
-- Josh Turiel
"2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."
Yes, I mean... who the hell wouldn't expect their new phone to quickly turn pink?
The AACS key is NOT 0xF606EEFD628B1CA427BEA93A9CA9773F
If I recall correctly the 3GS process is actually underclocked to run cooler. I want to say it's an 800MHz running at 600MHz, but I'm not certain about those numbers.
Your sarcasm isn't appreciated. This doesn't fix the cracks, that's stupid. If someone can't pick up your iPhone, they can't steal it. Just because you don't understand the brilliance of this anti-theft system doesn't mean you should mock it.
A lot of modern smartphones suffer these exact problems because of the push for more and more features. Basically, a feature add will add power draw, and will also tend to add CPU usage as the applications to run these new features crank up the utilization.
I don't have an iPhone... I have too much invested in the Windows Mobile platform dating back almost a decade to really migrate at this point (plus, I write some of my own little applets and upload to my phone all the time... can't do that with the iPhone without jailbreaking). However, I DO currently have an HTC Touch Pro, my previous device being an HTC Tilt. The majority of the time, the phone is excellent; it runs cool, it does exactly what I want when I want and doesn't have too many horribly nefarious bugs, though much of that probably has to do with the custom ROM I flashed to it. But if I start activating devices such as GPS, WiFi and other features like that it sometimes shocks me how hot the phone will get. Particularly if I'm using, say Google Maps as a GPS application.
Google Maps will turn on my GPS antenna, and then will start pulling data using my 3G connection (I have traffic turned on, too). Both of these add significant power draw and heat generation, and the GM app itself will tend to crank up the CPU. Because of the draw, and because most of the time I only use these functions together in the car I plug my phone into my car charger. But you know what? Then the screen stays on... more heat. Literally, my phone can get to the point where I'd be really uncomfortable holding that thing up to my ear... thank for Bluetooth headsets! Even if I skip Google Maps and use TomTom Mobile, it forces the screen to stay on so again the battery life goes into the toilet and I end up with a rather nice hand warmer on cold days.
Does it concern me? A little. I get concerned that this heat is going to shorten the life of my device significantly, but on the flip side I'm enough of a phone geek I tend to trade out my phones every couple of years anyway to get the "latest and greatest". Also, the Touch Pro has not shown any significant signs of being a problem child... it all works.
The Touch Pro has been pretty well engineered by HTC; they design a LOT of handsets for a lot of different markets. As a result, their experience in engineering these kind of form factors is really good. Their smartphone devices will dissipate heat quite well, and be none the worse for wear. My old Tilt still works as well as the day I bought it ~3 or 4 years ago, except that it's been dropped quite a number of times. Apple's problem is that they really don't have that experience, and as such they DO make mistakes with heat dissipation and things like that in a small form factor like the iPhone. They've done it before; their focus on aesthetics often takes over from the engineering portion... and while I know Apple has some phenomenal engineers, there's no replacement for experience. I think the engineering margins they built into the 3GS were just too tight for such a large CPU bump and general hardware bump. Everyone loves the fact that Apple used the same case (almost) for the 3GS... which is great for all those dock-equipped things that were designed for the 3G... but when you make such a significant jump from the old architecture to the new, something has to give if the margins for error were not factored correctly.
I suspect that Apple will provide a fix soon that will underclock the Cortex A8 core in the 3GS to eliminate some of that heat. Thankfully that's an easy solution until the hardware is reengineered a little. It should be possible to do that by maybe 10% and the average user will never notice the difference. If they're truly running it at 600Mhz, then the A8 provides a nice little mechanism to drop back to 500Mhz, or further. If they just provide a software limit so that the CPU doesn't crank up to a higher rate during high utilization, then it should take care of the problem. Yes, I have a Beagleboard which runs almost the same hardware (thou
Just goes to show you shouldn't be the first to buy any new gadget.
Early adopters always get burnt in some way. It is just more literal in this case.
How short our collective geek memories are. This same phenomenon occurred last year when Apple released 2.0.
;-)
Around August of '08 there was an outcry of users complaining about diminished battery life + hot iPhones. Both on the then-new 3G, and on the original. I had this problem with my iPhone 2G (the original) after installing iPhone 2.0. My battery life went from lasting several days to barely making it through one, with the phone getting quite warm if I used it for more than a few minutes straight. It would even stay warmer than ambient when I wasn't using it. A sure sign that *something* was awry. In September of '08, Apple released 2.1 and that completely solved the problem for me and many other users. Battery life + heat levels returned to pre-2.0 levels. Problem solved.
So it's entirely possible that this is some sort of software/power management issue. And if that's the case, Apple will (ok, should) be able to fix it. And if that *is* the case, then Apple really needs to take another look at their iPhone power management coding/testing procedures.
Yes it's Apple's problem. It's their product, and they should test it properly to make sure all the components work as they're supposed to on their own and once put together.
Anyway, we don't even know yet if it's the (non user-replaceable) batteries that's causing this so it might very well be a design flaw too.
iFan: Keeping the blistering speed of the 3GS from giving you blisters! Also provides emergency cooling in those tough Iraqi deserts where iPhones are being deployed. Comes with free 'Fanspeed control app'
Well, you _can_ pick it up. It just burns stuck in your hand so you can't let go of it. Definitely a feature!
I was wondering when Apple would get around to branding it's users.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
How many people still blamed Dell for those bad batteries?
Also a good design on paper/computer screen is not always a good design in the field.
The battery life on my new 3G S has been terrible--worse than my experience with the first generation device, where I had to replace the phone three times before I got one that worked properly.
I recently went into the Apple Store at the Burlington Mall, Burlington, MA, to see the Genius Bar about this battery problem. I was (and wasn't) surprised to have them offload the problem to me, how I was pushing/pulling data. They made a quick adjustment and told me to "come back if you have more problems". Though, intuitively, I wonder if this is what they're instructed to do.
The FAQ on apple.com even suggests that you just turn off 3G and this-and-that. What would be the point of having the phone if you have to turn off all the useful features?
I say that because I already experimented with different settings and did not see any improved battery life. I explained this very clearly.
What's even more concerning is when I made the initial call to Apple Support about the issue, the representative said that the battery performance was not covered under any warranty and that, even though I just bought the darned thing, I'd have to pay 79.00 to have it sent in and repaired, during which time I would be without a phone.
Ummm.... NO.
I made it very clear I would get an attorney and make them replace it. I was then placed on hold 2 different times, after which I was passed to a different representative who was more friendly and scheduled a Genius Bar appointment (per the above).
In summary: be prepared to invest extra time with this device if you're having any issues with the iPhone.
Caveat Emptor.
iPhone is actually running Objective C v2, which has Garbage collection.
I develop for the iPhone. It does not support GC (because it's a constrained device and they didn't wan the overhead). GC is supported on the Mac.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
My new 3G S gets pleanty of sunshine, sitting in a dock on my black dashboard in full direct sinlight...
I have run it for 4+ hours straight, in SC sunlight, in a car with poorly performaing Air Conditioning, (about 80 in the car) running iPod in the background, full volume output, WiFi and BlueTooth on, and with Google Maps on, in hybrid mode, screen set to not sleep, with GPS real time tracking and the compass enabled, while and charging the battery.
It was 102 degrees on Saturday. After that much time under that heavy load, the device was warm, but placing it in my shirt pocket was not uncomfortable. I even made a phone call within a minute or two of getting out of the car and placed it on my ear and was not at all concerned about the temp of the device.
I also played an immersive 3D game the other night from full charge until the battery died (about 4.5 hours) with the iPod running in the background. My bluetooth headset was on in my pocket, and wifi was enabled. The device again got warm, but not even as warm as it did in the car. Far from uncomfortable. My (now my wife's) 2G gets hotter under those loads.
Reports I've heard from people with "pink" phones are people who left it running like this under a pillow, in a bag, outside in the hot summer sun for hours, and other extreme conditions.
Quite possibly there's a battery issue and some bad one's floating around. There's over a million of them out there already. An issue rate of a few dozen phones per milion is a SMALL issue. Also, being a LiPo, not a LiIon, though it may get hot, it;s not likely to explode or burn as cascade failure is fare more difficult to achive in LiPo.
There is no contest in life for which the unprepared have the advantage.
The iPhone is (rather questionably imho) written in Objective-C, which uses manual memory management and thus lets you do double frees, buffer overruns
If you actually knew much about objective-C you'd know that's false.
Memory management is based an retain/release model, which removes you from most of the dangers of C memory management because you are working with a higher level abstraction.
The equivalent of a "double free" is over releasing an object, which means you send a message to a dead object and the program simply crashes. There's basically no way to corrupt the heap in Objective-C programming, because you are never doing the kinds of things that lead to that. Even in normal C code what you postulate is insanely unlikely, as heap corruption leads to core dumps, not infinite loops. I've done a lot of Java work too and basically the memory management dangers are very similar, the biggest problem you will have is creating a situation where you are not allowing memory to free properly when you think it shoud (which again simply does not lead to infinite loops).
What I suspect happens is that there's a subtle memory error in a part of iPhone 3.0 which causes some background process to start spinning inside malloc.
Far more likely is that some interaction with some of the new chips (say a new GPS chip with compass) that leads to it constantly consuming power when the phone thinks it's powered down. I have not seen this issue myself with a heavy day using maps recently, but it could be in combination with something else.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Look at it this way. The device was nearly certain to be huge. However, prior to it's actual launch, who would finance a massive facility to make tens of millions of devices America had never seen?
Apple has "rolled out" their iPhone in the same way the did with the iPod.
They're STILL building new facilities to handle the market load of ther device. Same for their Macs. They COULD be a lot more popular, but Apple simply doesn't have a CAPACITY to build enough fast enough if the device was actually 100% perfect. They also don;t have the staff to support a user base growing on that scale. even with their slower adoption they're having major staff issues, even 2 years in...
Oh, and it does multitask, allways did. Wuit the "background" argument already. I'm sick of it. Short of them needing a "plug-in" system for the iPod interface, so things Like Pandora can use it's functions as a background app, i can't find a single reason why suspend (sleep and resume without using resources) and notify (same thing as backgrounding in my opinion, and easier to code for) functionality isn't equally as good. The only thing they're missing on top of an iPod plug-in is for multiple web pages to be loading, or downloading docs, concurrently. But Mail downloads in the background, SMS runs in the background, so does the phone, name any one app you background on another device that we can't do exactly the same thing with on the iPhone without "requiring" backgrounding... No one has yet given me ONE, not ONE.
There is no contest in life for which the unprepared have the advantage.
The poster assumes that the reader is familiar with the size of a typical .25 watt resistor... and for the people who will actually read his (somewhat technical) post, he's probably right.
Nowhere else is technical knowledge brought together with goatse and GNAA trolls so seamlessly.
Love it!
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
Nice word game -- "when compared to the equivalent..." You have to add that qualifier because Apple doesn't offer the equivalent of the top tiers of service and support that Dell/HP/etc offer.
Amen. And I'm a former iPhone user...
Personally, one of my fav Android apps is Locale, which monitors your GPS location for user-designated locations and assigns the appropriate settings to your phone. For example, I walk into work and my ringer automatically turns off...I leave work, my ringer turns back on. No worrying about forgetting to turn my ringer back on and missing calls...and this is just one example.
I get phone calls and my auto reverse-lookup gives me caller-id for non-contacts (even cell phones), I can move data from one program to another without closing either...the list goes on and on.
The sad thing is that there are so many users who have been stupefied with Apple's "Whiz, Bang, WOW" marketing and will never know what it's like to have a mobile phone that truly allows you to do more, without limitation.
Again, maybe it's just me, but I prefer performance over pretty packaging...
[Insert pithy line of moxie here.]
Android isn't an iphone killer, they are targeting different markets, the iphone is going after the cool crowd who only care about how their phone looks, Android is going after the market that cares about function. In other words, Android is trying to be a WinMo killer, not an iphone killer and Android has a good chance of suceeding.
In two years, the iphone will be for fanboys only, Apple have never been able to establish themselves in an existing market. A massive side effect of the hype based sales is that things get old fast. Most of the iphone owners I know will buy a different brand of phone next time, they just tried it once to see what it was like (tried developing an analogy here but couldn't think of one that was clean). In two years, Android will be on many more devices then the iphone, most people will buy an Android phone and not even know it.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.