Some Overheating 3GS iPhones Glow Pink 364
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.'"
There's definately an issue of some sort (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:Battery Concerns (Score:5, Informative)
Re:There's definately an issue of some sort (Score:4, Informative)
Re:There's definately an issue of some sort (Score:4, Informative)
I had the same experience with a iPhone 3G (not 3GS) after upgrading to OS 3.0 Some stuck process drained my battery to zero in a very short period of time. I wasn't near my charger, and initially I thought that the unit had died. I've never drained the battery before, and trying to power it up in that state didn't give a response of any kind. Once I got home I was relieved when it woke up after docking it.
This is an OS issue I think, not the battery. The side effect is heat and reduced life though. I'd imagine that the thermal monitoring isn't able to shutdown the unit when it gets into that state. I wasn't handling my unit at the time so I don't know if there was heat related to the event.
Re:Android G1 also heats when using GPS (Score:5, Informative)
In case it's not been said yet... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:should have released it in winter (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Haven't seen anything like that so far (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:should have released it in winter (Score:2, Informative)
Overclocked processor? [wired.com] Maybe you should learn not to post false information.
Also, even if Apple designed the batteries, they didn't build them themselves. Poor manufacturing and QC of individual components isn't Apple's fault. Just as exploding Sony batteries isn't Dell's.
Re:Hmmmm ... (Score:2, Informative)
It seems hardware manufacturers have a hard time learning that electronics cause heat and that this heat needs to be led away from the device.
Fixed that for you.
It has nothing to do with Apple - all hardware manufacturers seem to have problems. A quick look at google for "laptop battery catches fire" turns up this [consumerist.com] story about a Dell battery catching fire, this [gizmodo.com] story about an IBM catching fire, and this [v3.co.uk] story about a Toshiba catching fire. And we know those three stories aren't rare - those were just quick search results to prove a point.
If you're going to pick on a manufacturer for a faulty battery issue, make sure you don't portray it to be something unique to that manufacturer when it's actually something that occurs pretty much across the board.
Re:should have released it in winter (Score:2, Informative)
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.
Re:There's definately an issue of some sort (Score:5, Informative)
It seems to be pretty common after the 3.0 OS upgrade and not limited to the 3GS.:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2045240&tstart=0 [apple.com]
http://forums.macnn.com/103/ipod-iphone-and-apple-tv/394175/battery-life-sucks-iphone-3-0-a/ [macnn.com]
Been there, done that. (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Re:should have released it in winter (Score:3, Informative)
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.
Poor Battery Life for 3G S (Score:2, Informative)
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.
Nope (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Inaccurate (Score:3, Informative)
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.
Re:Hmmmm ... (Score:3, Informative)
Keep in mind, apple makes and tests the device thourally. However, once mass production begins, and 3rd party battery manufacturers try to cut corners, the "samples" they send to Apple for testing may not reflect what they're putting in the devices.
Battery quality has LONG been an INDUSTRY issue, never a manufacturer issue.
The 3G S has the same thermal envelope of the 3G, and it was fine... 10 million of them were fine. The 3G S uses a newer battery, LiPo this time not LiIon. It'sd a far safer, stabler technology, and not subject to spontaneous combustion like LiIon.
Re:should have released it in winter (Score:1, Informative)
"Their", not "there". Their. It's their responsability. Their.
There are many people in this crowd. Their clothing looks bad. Their.
Got it?
Re:Hmmmm ... (Score:3, Informative)
Yeah, especially since Apple has been making the same mistake for almost 30 years now.
http://www.vectronicsappleworld.com/appleii/appleiii.html [vectronicsappleworld.com]