Top 5 Reasons Why Your Phone Is Heating Up

We all love our smartphones but what happens when your beloved phone starts heating too much and becomes a troublesome companion?

Well in that case, tens of questions might come into your mind and you start wondering what’s wrong with your phone/tablet. In extreme case you might even question your usage style!
But don’t you worry. You have come to the right place. In this article we will discuss the main reasons for your phone getting hot.
FYI: Hot phone is a relative term. Current generation of smartphones have hundreds of more features than the good old basic phones like Nokia 1100, Nokia 3315 and the like. So, don’t expect your phone to run as cool as these basic phones. It is not just possible with the current level of technology. However, things may change in the near future.
Now, while your phone may get too hot to handle for you, it might just be a regular affair for your friend who’s using an old smartphone. So you see how relative the term ‘phone getting hot’ is?
Below are some of the 5 most common reasons that result in your phone getting too hot for safe usage:

1. Heavy Usage

Modern smartphones are capable of running multiple apps at once. You can play a game online while listening to the music, and also have tens of apps running the in the background. All of this is made possible due to a powerful SoC (CPU + GPU) and giga bytes of RAM inside your phone.
But this degree of multi-tasking will take a toll on your phone’s battery life and its internal circuitry as the battery will have to provide to all these components at the same time. Please note that every electronic component will generate some amount of heat when it is being operated. So, multiple components being used at once will generate a lot of heat.

Heat is the killer of Electronics.

This is the heat which makes your phone hot. So, try to avoid multi-tasking whenever possible.

2. The Current Settings

Believe it or not, the current settings of your phone have a major role in deciding its battery life (and how much does it heat on usage). So, it would be a good habit to disable the features like Bluetooth, WiFi, mobile data, and set the display brightness to minimum level for optimal usage.
It is also advisable to set the display timeout to 30 seconds or less for further reducing the heat signature coming out of your phone while improving the battery backup at the same time.

3. Ambient Temperature

Ambient temperature while not a key reason for your phone to heat up at cold places, might become one of the main factors affecting heat generated in a phone at tropical regions.
Electronics generate heat whenever they are used. You might not feel this heat on the touchscreen or even no heat at all if you are living in a cold area. But when you visit a hot region like South Asia and Africa, your phone would start to heat up more often when you would use minimum apps. You can observe this difference mostly in the summers when you are sitting in an air-conditioned room compared to when you are outdoors in the Sun.

4. Using Phone While Charging

A phone can also heat up during charging due to 2 reasons. The first reason might be that you would be using the phone with an after-market charger not designed for your phone model. We would advise you to use only branded and certified chargers for your phone.
Some of you might never let your phone sit idle even when it is being charged. Charging process itself generates a lot of heat. But when you do something on your phone when it is being charged, it will result in slower charging along with more heat dissipation.

5. Too Many Apps Running In The Background

We all have so many apps installed on our smartphones that we forget which app do we really need in due course of time. As a result, you might have some lockscreen, fitness tracker, wallpaper apps along with the regular apps like WhatsApp and Facebook running in the background.
These apps would not only consume a lot of RAM while running in the background, but will also use a lot of processor time, generating heat.
So, it is highly recommended that you check your phone every now and then for uninstalling those apps which are really not required (or if you don’t use them often).

Other Reasons
Some of the other factors that will result in your phone getting hot are improper dissipation of heat due to the protective phone casing , over-clocked CPU, and the presence of rogue apps which use CPU at their will.
If all of these tips don’t help then it would a good idea to return the phone to its factory settings by performing a full system reset. Resetting will return your phone to stock settings and should solve the heating issues in most cases. And if it doesn’t then you should visit the nearest mobile service centre.