iPhone owners blast Apple over mystery ‘overheating’ bug that makes handset ‘too hot to touch’
Are you experiencing overheating issues with the £999 iPhone X? You're not alone
CONFUSED Apple fans have spoken out about a mysterious overheating issue that's making their iPhones so hot "it feels unsafe".
Online forums are being inundated with complaints from worried iPhone X owners who say they have no idea why their handsets are getting so hot.
A Reddit threat titled "Has anyone else noticed their iPhone X easily overheating?" has received hundreds of "likes".
One irate user moaned: "Mine used to overheat often. Forget google maps and charging at the same time. It would often shut down altogether. I reset it to factory settings and had the same issue.
"I went to [an Apple Store] genius bar. They told me I needed to set the device as new. This didn’t work either and I lost all my old texts and some contacts.
"Eventually they gave me a new phone. No more issues and it’s been about two months."
There are lots of reports about the £999 iPhone X on Apple's official support forums, too.
Many users say that the phone becomes too hot to even hold, for seemingly no reason whatsoever.
"I had it in my hands for a few minutes, and I could feel the case getting hot. I took the case off, and the phone was so hot I couldn't even hold it in my hand, but it wasn't shutting off, so I manually shut the phone off," said user 'jonshiota'.
Another said: "I just got my mom an iPhone X seven days ago, and today when she listened to music on her phone, the phone started overheating so much that the music kept on stopping. She was neither charging her phone nor using her phone so I don't know why her phone is overheating from running one thing."
One user described how his phone started lagging after 15 minutes of making a FaceTime video call.
He said that the person on the other end (using an iPhone 8 Plus) was experiencing no issues at all.
In a complaint on the Apple forums, he said that the handset was "too hot to touch".
And one user said he was even injured by the incident: "Apple, I spent $1500 on this phone and want to know when you are going to fix this overheating problem? My phone got so hot on the back that I started to have burn marks on my hand."
Apple temperature advice
This is the official advice from Apple around safe operating temperatures...
- Use iOS devices where the ambient temperature is between 0º and 35º C (32º to 95º F)
- Low- or high-temperature conditions might cause the device to change its behavior to regulate its temperature
- Using an iOS device in very cold conditions outside of its operating range might temporarily shorten battery life and could cause the device to turn off
- Battery life will return to normal when you bring the device back to higher ambient temperatures
- Using an iOS device in very hot conditions can permanently shorten battery life
- Store the device where the temperature is between -20º and 45º C (-4º to 113º F). Don’t leave the device in your car, because temperatures in parked cars can exceed this range
Apple admits lots of wacky behaviour can be caused by your iPhone getting too warm.
Charging can become slower, or stop altogether, and your display might dim down or turn off completely.
The cellular radios inside your phone might also enter a "low power" state, which can lead to weaker phone signal.
Your camera flash may become disabled temporarily, and performance can often slow for graphics-intensive or augmented-reality apps, games or features.
Apple lists the following situations where your handset might start to feel warm:
- When you set up your device the first time
- When you restore from a backup
- When apps reindex or reanalyse data, like Photos tagging for faces, places, or keywords after a software update
- When you use graphics-intensive or augmented-reality apps or features
Apple also reveals some other situations you might want to avoid if your phone gets hot easily:
- Leaving the device in a car on a hot day
- Leaving the device in direct sunlight for an extended period of time
- Using certain features in hot conditions or direct sunlight for an extended period of time, such as GPS tracking or navigation in a car, playing a graphics-intensive game, or using augmented-reality apps
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What's not clear is why it seems that overheating issues are particularly affecting the iPhone X.
When asked about this issue, Apple referred us to its support page for guidance on overheating phones – find it .
Apple debuted the iPhone X back in September 2018, but the phone didn't actually go on sale until November, reportedly due to production issues.
The handset is Apple's most expensive phone to date, costing anywhere from £999 to £1,149 for the top model.
It comes with new features, like an all-screen front design and a facial recognition unlocking system called Face ID.
Have you experienced any iPhone X overheating issues? Let us know in the comments!
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