Phone overheating
My iphone 12pro has overheating issues when charging and using GPS at the same time, is that common? is there something that Apple could do in this case free of charge?
iPhone 12 Pro
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There is a difference between running warm and overheating. If the phone does not shut down and display a message saying it can’t be used until it cools down then it hasn’t overheated, it’s just running warm. When you charge (especially fast charging) it can get quite warm, and when you use cellular data that also uses a lot of energy. So charging while navigating uses energy, which results in heating.
It’s called the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Anything that creates or uses energy does so with some loss. That lost energy is expressed as heat. So when you charge the phone it generates heat in the power source, heat in the charger circuit in the phone, and heat as the energy goes into the battery. The faster the charging, the more heat is generated. Likewise when you discharge the battery; not all of the energy from the battery gets to the circuits that use it. Some of it becomes heat.
If you use the cellular network for voice or data, converting energy to radio frequency signals is very wasteful; only about 30% of the energy that goes into the network components comes out as radio signals, the other 70% becomes heat. And signal strength matters; a 1 bar signal requires that the phone boost its transmitter power to maintain a connection, and it isn’t linear. 1 bar uses 10 times as much energy as 4 bars. You didn’t mention your phone model, but an iPhone 12 or newer (including SE 3rd edition) with a 5G signal uses about twice as much energy as an LTE signal, and 5G towers are still not as densely distributed as LTE, so the signal is likely to be weaker, compounding the problem.
