Why is my new Lumia 950 overheating?

[Windows Central Question]

I returned a 950 one day after purchase to AT&T due to massive overheating, and a two hour battery life. Clearly a problem. On my new handset, I didn't install the memory card, thinking that may be an issue. It seemed fine, almost cool to the touch for most of the day. Then, tonight, while simply browsing on Edge (no other apps running), it is ROCKET hot.

 

[Joe920]

I have an old DT-900 that I got free with my Lumia 1020. I never used it until now on my 950. and so far its taking a long time to get to 50% from 14% (over 2hours). Is this normal? Also finding the 950 to be getting very hot! The glass is quite hot to touch?

My DT-900 from my Lumia 920 did the same on my 950XL. Some people say this happens when the phone isn't aligned right, and others think that there's some runaway process that using power almost as fast as the charger can provide it. I think charging circuitry is also designed to slow charging if the battery gets hot, so maybe a combination of high CPU use and reduced charging rate due to the temperature? If anyone ever really resolves this please post, because I was also worried that it would be bad for the battery. Batteries degrade when they get hot.

 

[nbolmer]

Have you upgraded to the latest version?

Yes

 

[nbolmer]

I was having battery issues with my ATT Lumia 950. I tried soft and hard resets to no avail. Finally, LumiaHelp on twitter suggested Windows Device Recovery Tools to reinstall the OS. It took about 22 minutes for me and my internet connection. Afterward, I restored from backup, updated the phone to the newest build (10.0.10586.29) and like 50 something app updates. My battery went from 100% to 85% for the whole process and only got slightly warm. A vast improvement over what I was experiencing. My phone charges properly (8% to 100% in 45 minutes) and doesn't just get super hot. I went from about 40% to 25% over about 7 hrs while sleeping with glance screen set at 30 sec, Bluetooth and wifi on, a few emails during the night and my alarm set. While this isn't stellar, its a vast improvement over what it was. A few more days of testing should give me better results.

Any word? Did you / Do you have a memory card?

 

[nbolmer]

Well I am no specialist, and I am definitely not the best person to compare your Lumia experience too, but I do think I pinpointed where my problems are occurring on my second Lumia 950 xl.
So for a while now I experienced like a lot of users that the 950 xl would warm up. Sometime it would warm up a lot. When it would warm up a lot I found out that some of the old apps that I was using were not compatible with this version. So I reinstalled the phone, and only installed apps that could be found in the app store and stated they would work with this version. I noticed in the days following that it would get warm but not so warm anymore that you could cook an egg on it.
I then started to look into the problem why it still kept getting warm. Even though I was not doing anything strange or questionable. After going though a lot of forums I still could not figure out what the problem was. As suggested I went through the battery save and found one thing strange. My messaging was taking up at least 40% of my battery during a 24h period. Went and did some research on this and found out that the e-mail was having problems syncing. As soon as the syncing problems were over the phone would cool down. Have tested this theory several times and as of this moment it has been true to all my warmth and battery life issues. Solve the sync problems and battery life goes back to normal (meaning it is not drained in a few hours) and the phone no longer gets warm. Maybe this will help some of you to pinpoint your issues with the new and wonderful Lumia 950 and 950 xl.

To test this, I set Outlook to only check for new messages every 30 minutes. Didn't make any difference. Everything syncs fine.

 

[nbolmer]

I decided to completely reinstall the operating system using the recovery tool. Observations:

1) The process went smoothly. I was able to use a recent backup to bring my phone back to where it was prior to the reinstall with no trouble.
2) The process caused virtually no heating issues, or battery drain. The entire process took around 25 minutes and the phone didn't get warm at all.
3) Reinstalling the apps, which is automated, took around 45 minutes. I didn't have the phone plugged in, and there was no significant heat, nor battery drain. The process used 2% of battery life (it was 98% when it finished).
4) I did the entire process with no memory card. After a few days, I will reinstall the card and report back. I am convinced that the memory card has something to do with this.

Other observation regarding memory card:

The memory card can be removed / installed while the phone is on. Installing the card causes SIGNIFICANT heat almost immediately, and it doesn't go away. I only have my new Samsung card to try this on. This is prior to re-installing the operating system; I haven't tried adding the card back yet.

The phone is now running cool, which it had been for a couple of weeks prior to it overheating again, as per when I first purchased my original 950, and started using my second 950 prompting the initial post.

 

[netwirejohn]

I think there is a correlation with the device heating up and the constant data connection the device is trying to connect. I noticed once I turned off Cellular Data the Lumia 950 runs cold as a rock and battery life improved when running over WIFI. I also noticed that the arrow next to the cell reception is constantly on and I see it drain the battery. What is also weird is the arrow still continues to go on and off in minute intervals even when cellular data is turned off??

 

[knackwurst]

Sounds like my issue - fine until 10.0.10586.0 and then running hot with all background apps turned off. Battery life around 3hours unless airplane mode turned on. Then 6 - 7 hours.

Gary

This is an ideal description of my recent battery situation, and gives some added perspective, so thank you. I noticed I was on 10586.0 but hadn't been thinking of it as an "update" (focused more on the fact that it wasn't the latest), since the phone has been working flawlessly for weeks until just recently, and I haven't needed to look at the version. Perhaps my issues all started with a recent update in the background. It's either that, or from my installation of an SD card, and adding a bunch of data to it.

 

[Miroslav Galko]

My Lumia 950 was hot like hell in the first 2-4 days then getting better after 6 days everything works perfect and overheating is gone, I think there were some activities and setup running on background, I suppose in battery settings adjust which applications should run on background this is also eliminate overheating

 

[RTGent]

I haven't had any heat issues with my 950 -now approaching a month, and have now learned to manage battery-related settings so I can run all day. I have three email accounts all set to as-it-arrives, and I do not use battery saver. My main suggestion is to check your Privacy settings, especially Location and Background apps settings: All sorts of capabilities I don't need nor want, and I turned them off early on. I also deleted active apps I don't need/use including most ATT apps and facebook. I also don't use auto-brightness. Many of these settings affect battery life, and I can imagine (only) simultaneous combinations heating things up. Best heat and battery management to all.

 

[sheldon cohn]

Sounds to me that the engineers of the phone didn't get it correct. A computer has exhaust fans to
try to cool the computer, the phone needs a way to do the same, but the engineers of the phone left it
out. Most of the time my phone is in my pocket, but it could be bad to put a hot phone in the pocket.

 

[menyfresco]

Question? My 950xl is creating a rather curious text error...when I select a name from my contact list(example Peter) when the text is sent, the name changes to (David as an example) but the text went (Peter) any thoughts??

 

[Astro_Ninja]

Solved!!! Microsoft pushed an BAD update, which later they removed and fixed. But those of us who got the bad update got bitten. Solution: Restore your 950, then update your phone (update & security in settings, 'phone update', check for updates) The hole thing would take about one hour but fixes everything. (mine was having the '2 hour' battery life issue and super overheating. Everything is back to normal now)

 

[Paul Tram]

Like several others, my L950 was fine until recently when the battery started draining quickly and rather warmly. I also got the Low Storage warning indicative of the .29 update issue.
I did the hard reset last night and everything seems fine now. After a full charge overnight, I am down only 11% after fours hours of moderate use.

 

[brentrichardjr]

Any word? Did you / Do you have a memory card?

I do not have a memory card, but my phone works sooo much better now. I'd say battery life is on par if not better than my Lumia 830 was. I can get about a day and a half with my usage. I no longer have extreme heating when charging, fully charges in ~ 1hr and only loose about 7% battery while sleeping. If you don't mind a phone reset (which isn't that big of a deal if your backed up), I would definitely at least try this. Pretty much the last troubleshooting Microsoft will make you do anyways if your experiencing any type of issue.

 

[hewnc]

Changing the storage settings from SD Card to the device storage helped stop the heating up of the phone (and that help slow down the battery from draining). Thanks for sharing the tip.

 

[pavvento]

I think there is a correlation with the device heating up and the constant data connection the device is trying to connect. I noticed once I turned off Cellular Data the Lumia 950 runs cold as a rock and battery life improved when running over WIFI. I also noticed that the arrow next to the cell reception is constantly on and I see it drain the battery. What is also weird is the arrow still continues to go on and off in minute intervals even when cellular data is turned off??

This is the issue I am having. The arrow constantly shows, and I have eaten through 15GB this month on cellular when I never go over 6. I had my first one replaced and nothing is different with my replacement. This is with no apps running.

 

[Joe920]

This is the issue I am having. The arrow constantly shows, and I have eaten through 15GB this month on cellular when I never go over 6. I had my first one replaced and nothing is different with my replacement. This is with no apps running.

If you go to settings > network > data usage > usage details, do you see which apps are using the most cell data?

I have since returned my 950XL, but even now on my 1520 with WP10 I see on my GoPhone data usage report that my phone regularly uses 50-100MB while I'm asleep, but the 'usage details' page doesn't reflect this. Groove has used 140MB total, Edge about 100MB, System about 80MB, and the rest under 30MB. Oddly 'system' shows all the way at the bottom of this reverse sorted list. Weird.

I spent some (=too much) time parsing the GoPhone data report, see below. That's MBs of cell traffic according to GoPhone, with the blue regions between 11pm and 8am. Lots of activity at night, no clue what it's doing. It's not me unless I sleepbrowse. Worse: Wifi is usually on at home, so it shouldn't be using ANY cell data.

Edit: just checked: total daytime cell use 840MB, total nighttime cell use 620MB.

 

[Jamie Schlinkmann]

I'm not so sure about it being solved. I am still running 10586.0 and I have fought this problem for a week now, after a couple of weeks of no problems. I did a hard reset a few days ago and only set up one gmail account....nothing else! No apps!. Since then I have still experienced periods of heating + rapid battery drain and I am still getting notifications about being low on memory even though ~80% is open.

 

[kwajr]

Why not update you are 3 builds
behind

 

[Callum_Smith]

Are those 3 updates from the insider program? If so some people don't want to run the risk of bricking their brand new phone. I for one know that it's an expensive venture if something were to go wrong.