Iphone 4S getting hot?

Me too!

If I worked for Apple, I'd sure want to talk to you about this. You appear to have the most deterministic ability to repeat the problem that has been reported here. Intermittent problems are a pain to solve, but yours appears to be 100% everytime which should make it a great opportunity to get to the root cause.

Apple, ...please contact phonytony and figure this out for us!

Enjoy!

I recently upgraded to a White 16GB iPhone 4s, i've been experiencing all of these issues from the right side and the back heating up while i'm using my phone. The battery drains really fast and i'm a little bit concerned about this, are these problems only on the White 4s model? Because, I have no problem switching to a Black iPhone 4s if that's the problem because I really don't want to deal with this for the next year or so. Any idea if it's only on the White model?

i have a brand new apple iphone 4s which i noticed that have a same problum gettting hot from back cover and right side.i think this is the problum in all iphone4s even its black or white colour..but apple dont care about this and this is reason that samsung galaxy s2 become more papular then iphone even its is 4 s or any brand of apple..and samsun galaxy3s will kick out apple from market if the apple dont care about their customers.

Me too , mine gets quickly hot!!

I've been with this issue since mid March, after purchasing it on February. The first month I didn't really notice, since I play with the phone too much, so though that warm is normal. Later on, I notice, that the radio (GSM) is causing the heat and battery drain. But at certain tower (especially strong 3G signal) I didn't notice any heat up nor battery drain. If I force to set to 2G, some tower will heat up my phone. To ensure that it's caused by the radio.

To see if it really is from Radio, try turn on Airplane mode, while leaving Airplane mode ON, turn other feature ON (Bluetooth, Wifi, Location Service, etc). And leave it overnight, see if it heats up your phone or suffer battery drain.

Started out of the box with 5.0.1 (9A406), upgraded to 5.1 (9B176), and 5.1.1 (9B206), but none of them help my issue.

My iPhone currently works perfectly as a thick iPod.

My black 4s (32GB, 5.1.1, at&t) exhibited this again last week. I travelled via commercial aircraft in airplane mode with one stop. Signal at my ultimate destination was fairly low. On the second day, I noticed my 4s was consuming battery quite fast and it was very warm. I shut it off for about 15 minutes. After powering it back up, I did not have the problem again. On the way home, I powered it off on the plane and when I got home it did not have the problem.

For me this continues to be rare and primary travel related.

Hi Everyone,

I have had a similar problem just develop and I've had no success at fixing it so far. I have a 4S with OS 5.1.1 since it was released and originally set up from a 3GS back-up. Battery life had been excellent since OS 5.1 up until three days ago when it suddenly deteriorated. Now the phone runs very hot and drains battery from 100% to zero over 5 hours or so in standby and up to 1% per minute when in use. It has been running so hot that it is almost too hot to hold and yesterday it overheated and put up the overheat warning screen. It also has been turning itself off when the battery shows 15% or so and then refuses to turn back on while displaying the flat battery screen.

If I put it in airplane mode or turn off mobile data then problem stops, it stays cool and the battery does not drain any faster than it used to. Mobile data is slower than usual and and I seem to drop network connections more often. If I am in a wi-fi zone then the phone runs hot and the battery still drains but not as fast.

I have not added any new apps recently. I have shut down all multitasking apps and done some hard re-sets. I have removed and re-installed my e-mail accounts and calenders as well as resetting network settings. The latter seemed to help until I used safari with mobile data and then it started to run hot again and despite putting the phone back into standby the battery has drained fast and it has got very hot again. From what I have read this is likely to be due to corrupt firmware, causing the processor or data connection to cycle continuously, draining power and generating heat.

I expect that setting up as a new phone and not restoring from my icloud back-up would resolve it. However I do not want to loose my app data and sms messages unless I have to (I wish apple would give us more control over our backups and save these to icloud separately). I was wondering if anyone has had exactly the same problem and has a solution that has worked other that than resetting mail/calenders or network settings that have been working for people on some posts but not for me.

Thank you.

NDLH

If you have not already done so, try turning the phone completely off for 15 to 20 minutes and then back on.

Hi NDLH,

It's interesting that I had similar issue. The thing is, I narrow down the case to the GSM Radio especially in area without good 3G signal. How I confirm this is by turning off EVERYTHING (all notification, no wifi, no bluetooth, no Apps open, no iCloud active, no Location, you name it, while turning on the GSM Radio -- with or without Data). Other "clean" state, is when I did DFU restore, set as new Device, with only default apps, and turned all off (location, wifi, bluetooth), still, the issue persists. Whenever there's only 2G signal, it tends to give "No Service" or long "Searching..." status. At some occasion, if I force to get only 2G signal on area with 3G signal, it tends to gets hotter and hotter. When the iPhone is in its holster, it will eventually give a temperature warning sign like you had.

And yes, all these heat leads to battery drain -- that's where power goes. At worst (heat up all the way), it could drain to ~20-30% / hour without even using it.

I bought my iPhone since late Feb 2012, and till now, there's really no permanent cure with all the steps available in the web.

It was Out-Of-Box with iOS, 5.0.1, tried upgrade to 5.1, then 5.1.1, all give no improvement

I'm currently expecting iOS6 to fix this issue, as it changes the baseband to 2.8.01.

I suddenly had the warm back syndrome after longer phone calls on my iPhone 4. Hadn't noticed it before. I THINK (but not positive) the only change was having the GPS active for an app (Latitude) that I wasn't using. I turned it on several days ago to track a family member's trip, forgot to turn the GPS off. Checked the Settings > General > About > Diagnostics & Usage > Diagnostic & Usage Data.

There I discovered Latitude had crashed the system twice since having the GPS on, which kept Latitude running in the background. So, now that I turned off the GPS, closed the app totally (as well as others), and have no other active use of GPS (other than 911) ... we'll see if that takes care of the warm spot.

Also noticed my battery was draining quicker than usual - might be the same factor.

To the people discussing the iPhone 4 please understand we are talking about 2 different phones, althought the iOS is similar the Hardware and Basebands are very different so what you find on your iPhone 4 is serisouly nothing like what us 4s users are having, our heat is based around the hardware ie A5 chip.

hi guys

i think i have found the fix for the heating and battery draining problem, for me atleast.

I was facing the same problem as you guys are, phone getting heated and battery draining like mad when CELLUAR DATA kept on, i tried many fixes which are mentioned on this log. And keep most of the settings off but it still didnt work.

The i found icloud setting and saw that icloud is running many of application on celluar data.

I turned of my icloud.
Go in settings > Switch off all the app that your icloud is backing up.

It solved my heating and battery drain problem.

I have had this problem too, I usually find that it happens whilst playing a game or browsing the web whilst charging, sometimes without charging. I help it by turning it off for a short while usually 10-15 minutes, or if you are in a situation where you need your phone turned on, then I found that turning off Mobile Data and Location Services and also any background apps worked a treat for me, and it cooled down within 2 minutes.

i think i know what is the matter with the iphone 4s, see if you are connected to a network (o2, vodafone) the battery dies but see if you activate airplane mode you will see that you can play games for hours, listen to music without any battery being wasted. So to me the problem with the iphone 4s has got to be the all of the power is going into the signal and then thats why its heating up and draining the battery faster but to me i do not think that any restore is going to fix this no matter how hard that you try as i think it is a hardware of software malfunction probably by some of the other updates when we first stard to get the problems!!!! xD

hay, hay what do you know it works thanks!! xD