Got A Hot Cellphone? Resist The Fridge

Most of the time if your phone gets toasty, it’s because of some fairly benign reason — you’re playing a game that pushes the device’s processor, perhaps, or it’s connected to a high-speed charger. Other times, overheating can arise from an app or apps misbehaving, or even a specific kind of chip design. The point is, running hot isn’t unusual for phones, and they’re generally pretty good at compensating for it.

But when hot summer days — or a full-blown heat wave — arrive, your phone may start to have trouble shedding the extra heat inside. Once that happens, you may eventually find yourself unable to use your phone at all until it cools down, and that’s not good for anyone.

From Chris Velazco at The Washington Post, Here’s some tips to keep a cellphone from overheating:

➤Keep your phone out of the sun

Using your phone out under the sun — say, snapping some photos — means it can quickly absorb heat. And if it’s especially sunny, your phone might try to crank up the brightness of its screen to make it easier to read. That can be helpful, sure, but that also means your phone is expending more power, which increases the odds that the phone will shut down to protect itself.

➤Don’t push your phone too hard

Ideally, that means staying off your phone entirely, though we get that’s a lot harder than it sounds. If you can’t quite tear yourself away — or if you have a good reason you need to be on your phone — the next best thing is to limit what you do with it.

Avoiding using your phone's camera is a good example, especially for shooting videos.

Using your phone as a mobile hotspot is another common way to heat things up quickly; I’ve seen my iPhone offer up the dreaded temperature warning on a not-even-that-hot San Francisco day after pulling hotspot duty. Skip it, if at all possible. Ditto for graphically rich games: these can require a lot of oomph from your phone’s processors, and avoiding that load will keep your device cooler for longer.

➤Pop that case off

Some cases could make it more difficult for phones to effectively dissipate the heat building up inside them. If you routinely keep your phone enshrined in a case, consider removing it and storing the device in a bag or a pocket that doesn’t directly touch your body.

➤Use low power mode

Beyond limiting what you do on your phone, you can also limit what your phone is doing on its own. That’s where its low-power or power-saving mode comes in.

Among other things, Low Power Mode on an iPhone disables 5G (if applicable), makes your device lock faster, dims your screen and disables some background processes. These tweaks are ostensibly meant to make your battery last longer, but since they prevent from trying to handle lots of things once, it can help prevent overheating, too.

Android phones have a similar feature, and it’s usually called Battery Saver or Power Saving Mode depending on the company that built your device.

➤If all else fails, turn it off

The one sure-fire way to keep your phone from overworking itself — and overheating in the process — is to turn it off and stow it in the coolest place available to you.

➤Should I put my phone in the fridge?

Smartphones tend to cool off pretty quickly, and you’ll probably have a functioning phone again in just a few minutes if you just leave it alone. But if your phone is overheating right now and you absolutely have to use it, can you cool it down with a quick trip to the kitchen?

Maybe, but it comes with some potential hazards.

“I would not recommend putting a device into a refrigerator to cool it,” says Jon-Erik Hylle, a project manager at the repair resource website iFixit . “Rapid cooling in a moist environment could cause condensation and short the device. Also, going from very hot to very cold in a short amount of time creates its own risks.”