Phone Overheating In Mild Use

[Zzzz333]

S26 Ultra is getting too heated & warm in its upper back & entire front screen. 

Problem is it's happening even when S26 is both in flight mode, sleep mode & connected to WiFi only. 

Watch a small video, or take a few photos, or send a WhatsApp text, it's overheating and making it difficult to hold the phone, else my fingers start to feel the burn!

I tried every setting changes, but nothing is working!! What to do now? The phone is just 3-4 months old & not heavily used at all. 

[CEParsons]

When you say "overheating," do you mean that the device is actually shutting down to protect itself?

If this isn't happening, the phone may be uncomfortably warm, but is still operating within safe limits. Since your device is heating regardless of network connection, this is most likely due to ongoing background processes. Videos and photos tend to warm the device because computational photography is actually a pretty hefty processing task.

Modern silicon is severely overpowered and generates much more heat than devices once did. The upper portion of your phone is where the chip set is located, and is exactly where you should expect the phone to feel warm.

You may also check to see if there are any ongoing background processes, like drive uploads/backups, location tracking apps, etc.

I know at a personal level when I upgraded to my S24+, I was initially concerned by how warm it was. You can mitigate this to an extent by switching to a light performance profile. You can also download Samsung's Good Guardians app and use thermal guardian to monitor temps and implement additional preventative measures.

Good Guardians: https://apps.samsung.com/appquery/appDetail.as?appId=com.android.samsung.utilityapp

[IraqVet04]

Great information, as always.

[AAbbott]

Warm does not always equal overheating.  Electronics (ALL electronics), get hot when in use.  The phones are not as well insulated as other, larger electronics, and are held in your hand, so you will always feel the warmth.  The screen generates heat, the battery generates heat, certain cases may trap heat (most don't).  The phone has overheating protection, so if it was truly overheating, it would protect itself by first slowing down (lag), and then warning you and, finally, shutting down to prevent damage.

[WithAHammer]

As said, there's warm, and "I'm warm enough that I'm going to shut down so the battery doesn't warp from continuous use".

My phone is currently running at about 103° at the battery temp sensor; this is with a particular app under constant background use and a room temp around 74°. While I don't know what the current shutdown trigger is, my first cell phone would shut off at ~135° battery temp.

[AAbbott]

Why do you have an app with constant background use?  While many apps run persistently in the background, they should not be running constantly. (Some apps are "always on", but merely "listening" for its trigger).  You will definitely know when the phone is starting to overheat in the critical zone, the lag is unmistakable.

You can download Samsung's Good Guardians app from the Galaxy store and then download the thermal guardian module.  It will tell you if the phone is operating within the normal thermal threshold or at a critical threshold.

[WithAHammer]

The "always running" app is BOINC, originally produced through Berkeley (for Windows originally, then expanded from there), that does Volunteer Computing for projects. (Originally Seti@Home; there are now projects in math, astronomy, medicine...). It works on assigned tasks, aka "work units". It includes an option to select the number of CPUs that are running tasks, with each allowed CPU running one task, and would be roughly equivalent in processor terms to streaming several videos or songs at the same time.

(EDIT: And in terms of lag/temps, even with BOINC utilizing 6 CPUs out of 8 - with it not being capable of fully using all cores on any Android device because of big.LITTLE in CPU design - the temps stay stay stable, and I don't see any lag either in YouTube or playing one of my games on the S26. [Other devices vary, due to inherent design differences].)

[AAbbott]

I would think an app like that, being in a constant state of activity, would generate a bit of warmth.  As stated, a battery in use will generate heat - this is physics.  Being in use, coupled with your normal use of the phone, I would think your phone would always feel warm to what some people consider hot.  That does not mean that it is overheating, just that it's in use.  Is it hot enough to be uncomfortable to hold the phone, or merely warmer than you would expect it to be?

[WithAHammer]

It's at the level I would would expect. My unstated intent was to have a point of comparison, that in the context of how I use my phone, it IS warm (but not hot, as I define it), and not in any danger of automatically shutting off under the (quite possibly out of date) information that I picked up several years ago.