Owners say iPhone 3GS is a scorcher
Don't put it under your pillow...
Owners of Apple’s latest iPhone, the 3GS, have begun letting off steam online with claims that the smartphone gets hot enough to cause itself and its owners physical harm.
This 3GS' owner claimed his super-hot phone caused burn marks on the back
3GS owners from around the globe have posted pictures and descriptions in various forums online showing what are alleged to be scorch marks on the plastic rear panel.
One iPhone 3GS owner, for example, told French website Nowhere Else that a “reddish/pink” mark appeared on his handset’s rear panel after the phone become “very hot”.
Another iPhone 3GS owner told PC World that he fell asleep with the phone under his pillow while playing music through the headphones, but was awoken “with a sharp pain on my left arm under the pillow”.
The man concluded that he “had been burned decently [sic] from the iPhone getting so hot”. He acknowledged that the phone still worked afterwards.
Users have complained about the iPhone 3G getting very hot during extensive use since day one, so these latest 3GS allegations are by no means unique.
It’s worth noting that the latest model sports a more powerful processor than its predecessor, but Apple has yet to make any official comment regarding these latest claims.
If you’ve experienced similar problems with your iPhone 3GS, then Register Hardware wants to hear from you. ®
COMMENTS
Nawwww, it's not so hot
The one I borrowed for a bit got warm. Then again so have all my various generations of iPods, and most any other device of that size - like my antique-but-quite-usable-thank-you-very-much Nokia 63xx cellphone if in use for a while.
Seems to be a non-issue to me.
Under pillow? Fine
OK, running a *phone* under a pillow *SHOULD* be fine.
A) Phones shouldn't run that hot.
B) MP3 playback is not CPU intensive, so even if it ran hot under full load it STILL shouldn't be running hot under that use scenario.
OS3 making old IPhones run hotter? Probably it bumped up the clock speed. Apple's done this before, they will increase clock speed with an IPhone OS upgrade; people think there was some great efficiency gain in the OS while it's actually the processor running a 100mhz or so faster. Then if they get too many complaints they clock it down a bit in the next release.
Aircon - it's the future!
My 3G was icy cold yesterday after navigating in maps and streaming music over bluetooth for hours on end in the hot sun.... but that might just be because it's mounted on the vent and the aircon was on full blast. ;)
There is obviously a fault in the phones that heat up to the point of burning though, if nothing else I would have thought the phone would switch itself off if it had detected it's heat was above a certain level, the laptops do it, so the phones should - plus a phone doesn't heat up THAT much just using the ipod function, there's a dedicated chip for audio decoding isn't there? Even if there isn't, it takes next to nothing these days to decode music... so either he was running another application that was hammering the processor none stop, or the phone is faulty... I'd go with faulty though since some others are reporting the same thing.
This is really a symptom of a bigger problem at Apple though - Apple stays silent while users are forced to complain amongst themselves and to papers until they come out with a fix or even acknowledge the issue - which is wrong - if they only replied with a "we have reports of some users having issues with overheating phones, we are in the process of investigating and will get back to you as soon as possible" message people would be a little more forgiving, even if it's a manufacturing fault (which happens to everybody!)..... instead the silence just breeds conspiracy and guesswork which is one of Apple's most annoying features.
Makes me wonder though - I wonder if I could release an iBurn app that just heats the phone up to the point of damaging itself or the user... could sell well if you advertise it as a ticket in on settlement apple will give people if people start taking apple to court! - sell it for 99p, cheaper than doing the lottery, with better odds! :)
No so hot.
Gets no hotter than the previous models.
I'd prefer to have the metal case of the 1st Gen anyway. Makes it much easier to hold (and less likely to crack if you drop the damn thing.
the word "hot"
To me this is when my iPhone was that hot i could not keep it touching my arm due to the amount of heat it was giving off.
I have had a replacement as the one i had would not take my password unless i kept syncing with itunes. then would only last for so long.
What is strange it only came with OS 2.2.1 installed and not OS 3.0 and starts with the 5 on the serial number...
