My iPhone 14 overheating when connected to apple carplay

AndaM wrote:

I think I found the pattern. If you start CarPlay on a too low battery phone, you are doomed.

If your battery is on a good charge to atart with (did not find the threshold yet). All is good.

Good observation. Most likely the car supplies enough energy to fast charge the phone, and fast charging any phone will cause it to get warm. As long as it doesn’t actually turn off it is not overheating; it is just warm (very, perhaps). Fast charging stops at 80%. So 80% is a clear cutoff, but probably even 50% will be ok, because 50% to 80% will take 10 to 15 minutes, not enough time to get very hot.

Cellular connections use a lot of energy; about 50 mw with a full 4 bars, but 600 mw with only 1 bar because the phone needs to increase power to maintain the connection. And that is at about 30% efficiency, so worst case power requirements just for the network connection are about 1 watt, continuously. And if the connection is 5G it can be even more. I’ll assume the phone’s screen is off using CarPlay, so at least that source of heat is gone. If the screen is on, however, that also uses a lot of energy. The battery capacity is about 4 watt-hours, so that is an indirect measure of what causing the heating. At the worst case of 1 watt you would need to recharge after about 3 1/2 hours.

What do you see using energy when you go to Settings/Battery at the end of the day?

I solves this problem on my iphone 12 with a force restart: briefly press volume up, then volume down then press and hold the opposite side button until Apple Logo appears. My problem went away after this.

I solved this problem on my iphone 12 with a force restart: briefly press volume up, then volume down then press and hold the opposite side button until Apple Logo appears. My problem went away after this.

I've tried every option mentioned above on my Subaru Crosstrek with both an iPhone 14 and in the last month an iPhone 15.

On Carplay the phone overheats to the point where it disconnects from Carplay and stops playing. At that stage the phone is very hot but not usable as - well it's kind of obvious that it should be able to do a trip on Carplay without Carplay failing and cutting out / disconnecting because of overheat.

A friend bought exactly the same car as me and I asked him his experience to compare.

"Howsit , nope I'm on Android Auto .... Samsung Galaxy S22+ and no problems"

The only solution is to use a cable to charge (which is a bit of a waste as the car has cable free charging and cable free Carplay) and put the phone in the airvent to keep it cool as someone suggested.

I know many people have insisted that it is normal for an iphone to get hot on Carplay but well, I just can't see that it is a feature that unless you put your phone in the airvent you can't use it for more than 20 minutes on Carplay before it stops working.

An iphone left in the sun will eventually say that it is too hot and stop working. This is not the case here although I suspect it would eventually pop up that message if left charging. But Carplay stops working and disconnects or the music starts to crackle and break up as it gets hotter. So while I don't have the overheat message, the phone is pretty useless if I can't listen to music while driving.

Same problem- I rebooted mine - quickly press volume up, then volume down, next hood button on opposite side down until Apple logo appears. Once restarted, my prob went away for couple weeks. Still have to do this every now and again.

I think the latest IOS 17.1.2 update will fix your problem. I was also heating up and in my short test it seems to have been fixed. My drive was only about 10 minutes but before in that amount of time it would be warm and yesterday it was the same temp. I also shut off updates so this dose not happen again. I love wireless Carplay.

Unplug your iPhone when using CarPlay or find another way to keep your iPhone cool (like your car's A/C). Using GPS and streaming music in direct sunlight would make any phone hot.

If your iPhone or iPad gets too hot or too cold - Apple Support

My Iphone 14 Pro Max started with the latest IOS upgrade. I always use a wireless device in my Tundra vs the cord just for convivence and I have never had any of my Iphones getting hot like it gets now. If I use Bluetooth there is no problem but if I use Carplay you can feel it getting warm in just a few minutes. I guess my next step is to try the cord and see if it makes any difference.

Now I tried to switch to 4G and it is better.

I says phone needs to cool down and gets into low power mode.

The issue is CarPlay sucks so much battery that the phone is constantly charging at max rate. Then after a while of driving. The phones overheats with the message.

rdean58 wrote:

I guess it's a matter of semantics as no, it didn't shut down but it get hot to the touch. If I plug it in, I get the overheating warning message. This ONLY happens when connected to Car Play so there must be some correlation. Again, I was not charging when it got hot.

You aren’t getting an overheating warning message either. You are gettin a “charging paused” message. It’s purpose is to prevent the phone from overheating. ALL smartphones that support fast charging do this. Most of them just pause and keep the fact that they are pausing a secret, including all iPhones prior to iOS 16.5. With that update Apple added the notification that it was pausing, but it has always done it. So in a way they got into trouble by being more honest.

Mine shutdown twice (iphone 14) two months old, i.e. overheated with the warning and the second time both the wifi and bluetooth module failed on the iphone. It is now being repaired. There is a problem with carplay and this version or maybe any version of IOS. The loaner phone iphone XR also got very hot, though now I am aware of the problem I disconnected it before it shutdown. I questioned the tech at the Apple store pretty hard about this problem. He danced around the answer. My first iphone 14 also failed on the third day, screen flicker, and they gave me a new one. They are no longer replacing the phones but repairing them. I would suggest moving back to the 13 or upgrade to the 15. My experience with the 14 has left me looking to move on from Apple phones.

The message that says it is stopping charging is NORMAL when you fast charge. It doesn’t mean the phone is overheating.

The reason you didn’t see this message in the past is because it didn’t exist prior to iOS 16.6. Instead the phone would just pause to cool off and not tell you that it paused to cool off. This is a new feature to give you more information about what your phone was doing.

Considering how many people are confused by this new feature it was probably a mistake to add it. In the past users would post “why did my iPhone stop charging at 80%?” Now they post “Why did I get a message saying my charging paused”.

There is a popup to warn that the phone needs to cool down. This problem is plaguing the iphone and breaking the carplay experience since ios 16.1.