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."
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.
Try reading this post on CNET I've not read it, but it seems to be relevant.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
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
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?
iPhones Glow Pink
From what I hear about Apple fanboys this will be seen as an advantage.
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.
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."
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
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
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.