Too hot to handle?

[steveninspokane]

Ok, so I went out of town the other day, about a 3 hour drive. I had my D2 on the moto car dock and was using the Navigation app that comes with the phone. After about 2.5 hours, a warning popped up on my screen "Temperature Alert!" and advised me to basically turn off the phone. I pulled it out of the dock and it was extremely hot. Another thing is, even though the dock was plugged in, the battery was completely dead with 5% remaining.

It was not a hot day and my dashboard was not hot either. I am just wondering how this could happen?

Another time it gets really hot is while downloading. I was downloading a 100+MB file a few weeks ago, and put the phone back into my pocket as it was going to take awhile. My leg felt liked it was getting burned and I pulled the phone out and it was so hot I had to turn it off. My leg felt sore for a few days.

Is this just a problem with the D2, or is it my phone. I can't say I ever really noticed it before, but maybe just shrugged it off.

 

[hookbill]

For a Droid to get as hot as you describe it would have to be because an app was active. This would also explain your loss of power even though connected to a charger.

You need to look at your Battery information to see what is using all the juice. I've never heard of anyone getting a burn pain from any Droid.

 

[NiceGuysFinishLast]

Once the battery hits a certain temp, it will start discharging faster than it can charge. Then the charging system will stop actually trying to charge the battery, because it can detect that it's too hot, and adding more power would potentially cause damage. Using the GPS receiver, having the screen on constantly, plus whatever other apps you may have had running will cause the phone to heat up. Being on the charging dock makes the phone heat up. Being in direct sunlight on a dash board, even on a "not hot" day will make the phone heat up. I see you're in Spokane... Washington? High today was in the 50s, right? So you probably had the heat on in your car?

 

[baboon619]

I was using an app called waze for a few months which is a navigation app. I noticed while using the app for a few hours my phone would heat up pretty good. Not as hot as you described but still. I stopped using that navigation app! Continuous heating like that will at some point kill your phone and battery. Find out which app was causing the huge drain and don't use it while navigating. Or not at all.
And a +1 too the reason why the battery was dead even though it was charging.

Sent from my DROIDX using DroidForums

 

[steveninspokane]

Thanks for the response, it amazes me how hot it got. How or we suppose to use this phone as a smart phone if we can't run it for hours and make use of gps or screen intensive apps? I am wondering, if I remove the battery before placing it in the cradle if it would still got hot?

As for running the heat, quite the contrary, I had the AC on as it was more humid than hot, and I was traveling from Spokane to Pasco, the outside temp was roughly 55-65 degrees.

I did have a car dock replacement app running and have sense removed it to see if that was the problem, however it is not to often that I travel for such a lengthy period. Though, I will be traveling to Las Vegas here in June, and would like to know for certain that I will be bringing a phone with me that can endure the journey, especially since I just won the CoPilot app from the forum and I would like to give it a go.

 

[Tillyswilly]

I know my phone in the car dock for more than about 1 1/2 hrs and its really hot no matter the temp outside if the sun is shinning and even at night still gets warm and after about 2hrs I get the same temp control message....my suggestion is get you a battery temp app that shows you what temp the phone and battery are at

 

[steveninspokane]

Well, I took it for a 45 min drive running stock everything and utilzing google maps from the car dock. After I got there, the charger was no longer charging (stopped at 80%, and the temp was 157 Degrees F. idk, that just seems really hot to me.

 

[Backnblack]

Thats only 70 Celsius....IIRC 90C is the upper limit

 

[Snow02]

That is too hot for the battery though. Temps that high can kill the cells. Best to keep it under 50-55C if possible. Short durations are fine, but hours at temps higher than that and you need to start looking at buying another battery.

 

[jjaeger]

Does not the technology today plan ahead for that problem, I would agree with you if we were using technology from 5 years ago or ten years ago but now?

Sent from my DROIDX using DroidForums

 

[Snow02]

Here you go.

"High discharge rates combined with elevated temperatures can cause self-heating, an effect that could permanently damage the separator and electrodes of the cells."

"III, The battery may explode above 60 ℃

With the low temperature case, if the laptop battery in high temperature environment, which will affect the battery's charge-discharge efficiency, but also for more serious damage to the Inspiron 510m battery, for example, or as a result of the use of inferior charger charging time is too long, making the battery 3R305 larger heat, When the temperature exceeds the maximum charge temperature limit, this will destroy the chemical balance within the cell, resulting in performance degradation of battery materials, to reduce battery life."
http://www.laptops-battery.co.uk/blog/the-temperature-and-the-battery/

 

[Backnblack]

Humm..I was way off.

 

[Snow02]

Yeah. The chips can handle up to around 90C before the package begins to degrade like you said, but the battery...not so much.

 

[steveninspokane]

I am still wondering, is this acceptable? I mean, for me to use this phone for it's purpose, and in that it is ruining my phone/battery. To me, that just doesn't make much sense.

Does everyone else with a D2 have the same thing were there phone gets hot? I mean this was just a 45 min drive, my trip last week was about 3 hours, and it produced a warning advising me to turn things off.

What good is Google maps, Navigator, and GPS, if I can only use them for 20 minutes?

I can't even download a single file that takes more than 15 minutes without a noticeable heating problem.

I am thinking about buying the Charge, but holding off for lack of research, and lack of time thereof, haha.

 

[Snow02]

If it's getting that hot, it's possible you have something chewing up cpu cycles. Check the battery use in settings to see if something is using a higher percentage than it should be. Or install watchdog from the market to monitor what's using the cpu.

Another thing that can help is turning your screen brightness down as far as possible. That greatly reduces the current draw, and the heat produced.

Another thing that would likely greatly help is to download something like copilot ($5 in the market and a great app). Since it stores maps locally, it doesn't use the cellular radio - another large source of heat. I agree you shouldn't have to do this, but if it becomes a problem you can't fix otherwise, you do have the option.

Whatever you do, don't let the phone get into the 65C+ range. The risk of battery rupture or, worse, explosion is very real beyond that.