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iPhone 5 gets very hot

Having owned my iPhone 5 for 2 days now I've noticed that when I've been using it for about 5 minutes the back becomes really quite hot and the battery seems to be running down fairly rapidly. Does anyone know the cause of this and is there anything that can be done to remedy the problem? Cheers

Posted on Sep 23, 2012 2:38 PM

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186 replies

Oct 3, 2012 7:58 AM in response to dm254

Same problem.

iphone 5 32 gig.

Fully charged when i went to work. Did not touch it for a few hours. Then when i did, it was hot and battery was down to 53%.

I closed all the icons then shut it down. Seems to have fixed the problem for now. But for how long?

Thinking of returning it.

Not happy about the skype and maps issues neither.

Oct 3, 2012 10:38 AM in response to dm254

My iPhone 5 gets hot even when I'm not using it. I carry it in a pocket and from time to time it will get very warm. I have cellular data off and most notification and location services off, etc. I do have Apple Care on it and I'm hoping a software update soon will fix it. I also have problems with the wifi cutting out. Some times I need to turn the wife off and on repeatedly to keep it working.


I'd do a restore but whenever I have to restore from a backup it takes iTunes overnight to restore all the data back to the iPhone.

Oct 3, 2012 2:44 PM in response to dm254

I also have an iphone 5. I have noticed that when I send emails my phone gets extremely hot to touch and it drains the battery extremely fast. I sent a couple of emails today, without attachments, and my phone got so warm I could feel the warmth through the otter box it is in. I have notified apple of this and they have told me a few things to help with this. They told me to call back if there were anymore issues. They also told me that they have not heard of any other phones having this issue.

Oct 4, 2012 7:50 AM in response to harriettekd

They told me one of the reasons it could be doing it is because everytime I send anything it sends it to apple. They told me to shut off my diagnostics & usage. It is found under settings, general, about, diagnostics & usage then put it on don't send. It will stop sending everything to apple. Another thing was deleting my email of my phone and resetting the phone by pressing the home button and the power button leave it off for 10 secs then turn phone back on. When phone is back on add your email again. Those are what apple figures should fix the phone. He told me to monitor it for awhile and gave me his direct number in case it happens again. I haven't had any issues since I did this but I am not sure that it has helped. I will have to keep an eye on it and see what happens.

Oct 5, 2012 10:45 AM in response to dm254

I just received my iphone 5 and within 5 minutes of being on the phone, it gets so hot I have to put it down bc it almost feels as if it's going to burn my hand!


It seems it only gets hot when I use the phone; it reminds me of an old nextel I used have... but I had that phone for over 5 years when it started doing that! I've had this phone for five minutes!


Apple Geniuses... PLEASE HELP! I can barely use the phone!

Oct 6, 2012 10:02 AM in response to Franbug

I believe the problem is related to cellular data and possibly LTE speck ally.


I was just put of the country and therefore had my cellular data off and only used wifi. My battery lasted FOREVER and my phone never got hot.


Or, maybe it's related to a signal reconnect concept - if the phone has a weak signal to its wifi or wireless network the. I think there is a bug in the software where it spends all of its resources trying to reconnect.


I remember this happening to me once with my iPhone 4 while on a plane. I forgot to put my phone in airplanes mode and when I landed and took my phone out of my pocket the phone was REALLY hot And the battery was dead.


Hopefully Apple will have a software fix, but in the meantime if you are on wifi try disabling your cellular data and see if the phone runs better.

Oct 8, 2012 9:16 AM in response to dm254

Same Problem: iPhone5 running hot and loosing charge very quickly (~1 hour lost >25% charge lost while on standby, with no use).


Solution: Reset phone to factory settings and set up as a new phone (do not restore from backup).


I took the iPhone to a Genius who said charging issues are usually (though not always) due to software problems, he ran some diagnostics and also asked if the new phone had been restored from a backup (yes it was; from and iPhone4S to an iPhone5), he surmised that the 4S backup could have been corrupted. He recommended a reset to factory defaults, and to not restore anything from the corrupted backup and then manually add back the apps that I needed (I had Mail, Contacts and my Calendars on iCloud, etc., so those were saved!) The Genius reset the phone at the store and the heat problem was immediately resolved. Adding back the apps was a time consuming pain but it did gave me an opportunity to weed out 200+ apps that I'd used only once or twice.

iPhone 5 gets very hot

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