I may have reviewed smartphones for many years, but I’ve always done so in the UK with its lovely mild climate.
So with a massive heatwave gripping Europe, all my knowledge of phone use went out the window.
Android phones can have overheating problems at the best of times, but usually changing background settings can resolve this, or sometimes Android updates mitigate the offending problems.
But when it’s 95 degrees outdoors for weeks at a time, a little app update or phone tweaking isn’t enough to solve the problem.
My phone is coping with the heat even worse than I am.
Ever since I switched to the Realme 13 Pro Plus several weeks ago, it’s been intermittently crashing and turning off.
It’s not an old phone, or a broken one; it’s just struggling to cope with the heat, making it pretty useless.
These constant crashes have cut off hotspots at the wrong moment, stopped music streaming to a roomful of people, and stopped me from using contactless to get on public transport. It’s an annoying problem.
Still, it’s all my fault. After several weeks of hoping it was just a phase, I’ve come to realize that my failure to contend with the heat has absolutely destroyed my phone’s ability to keep going.
So I drew on my knowledge of mobiles to find some fixes, and since employing these, my phone lasts … better, I’d say.
I should have used these fixes straight away, but if your phone is struggling with heat, perhaps they’ll prove useful to you.
You wouldn’t wear a coat in the summer; why should your phone?
If you paid good money for a hardy, useful phone case, not using it may feel like a waste of money (and since you shouldn’t use the free in-box case, you probably like using it too).
But trust me: the phone case has got to go.
A phone case acts as a thick layer of insulation for your mobile, stopping it from dissipating heat like it should.
That’s simple physics. Heat can be trapped by successive layers, and it’s why wearing multiple layers is often a better way to stay warm in cold temperatures than wearing a single one.
But with many of the materials used in phone cases being especially thermally insulating, like silicone or TPU, you’re basically cladding your device in a thick wooly jumper.
Cases act as an insulation layer, keeping your phone warm.
Phones produce heat from day-to-day activities, and even when you’re not using them. Hot weather will naturally heat them up too.
Usually, this shouldn’t be too dramatic, but if there’s a case, they stay hot due to this trapped warmth.
If you remove your case, the handset will lose temperature much more easily.
To continue the clothes metaphor, it’s like removing a layer when you’re in the sun. It’ll let you cool down, and stop you from overheating.
Turn off some features you’re using
Cool it with the advanced tools, literally
Another stupid mistake I made, which caused my phone to crash on an almost-hourly basis, was using the device to hotspot.
I recently moved home, to a place temporarily without Wi-Fi, so getting internet from my phone was necessary to keep working.
As any hotspot user knows, this feature can cause your phone to heat up very quickly, and stay at these high temperatures until the feature is turned off.
Working for hours on end with a hotspot is a recipe for disaster, and I should have been more sparing with the internet.
But that’s not all. Many other advanced features warm up the phone and are worth turning off.
As a general rule of thumb, the more power-consumptive a feature is, the hotter it can make your phone.
Features which drain the battery often cause overheating.
So to be safe, I’ve capped the display refresh rate on my phone, turned off automatic brightness to keep it low, and switched my SIM to prefer 4G connectivity over 5G.
Other features worth deactivating are Wi-Fi and Bluetooth scanning, so your phone isn’t constantly looking for signals, and the always-on display.
I listen to a lot of music, and noticed that this caused crashes.
So I’ve been making sure to use Bluetooth LE when possible, as this power-efficient form of connection produces much less heat (and uses less power) at the expense of audio quality.
Don’t use a fast charger; stick to slow
Definitely no wireless charging either
I’ve already written for Android Police about how I ditched my super-fast phone charger for a slow one, and a benefit of this is that my phone stays cooler when it’s plugged in.
Your Android phone gets hot while charging; this is just a natural part of using a mobile, as some of the energy going into your mobile inefficiently is converted into heat.
But this process is greatly sped up if you’re charging your phone quickly, which is a higher-amp charge.
You’re getting the same amount of wattage in a shorter amount of time if you’re using a faster charger.
And I’ll admit, despite writing that article, I’ve found myself using my 65W laptop charger to power my phone when convenient, which has seen it heat up to alarming temperatures.
Many times my phone has crashed when it’s been plugged into this charger.
I learned my lesson pretty quickly.
Now, to stop the phone from getting absolutely destroyed by fast charging, I rely on slower rates (sometimes with an actual slow charger, often by plugging it into my laptop), and the problem has been greatly reduced.
Don’t let your phone feel the heat
These three pointers have proven useful for me during this heat wave, stopping my device from crashing nearly as frequently, but it’s better than that.
Phone heat is terrible for your mobile’s battery health in the long term, so these will continue to be useful.
