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.
... 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.
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"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.
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''.
Why don't these people just put in a new battery?
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.