Why does a phone heat up when doing a simple task like web browsing?

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sobamonster42

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Jun 16, 2012
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I know phones these days with quad cores that go to 2.7ghz can run pretty hot but why do they do so when doing something as simple as web browsing which is supposed to be less demanding than video playing or gaming?
 
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jbrown156

jbrown156

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May 7, 2014
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any phone that gets hot doing basic stuff like browsing the web is certainly defective regardless of the quad core cpu .. if you have a phone that gets hot just by browsing return it or just get it replaced
 
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leo2kp

leo2kp

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Oct 9, 2006
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I would argue that web browsing can hit a CPU and GPU pretty hard these days with all the moving ads. You may be able to enable the CPU and GPU meter in the phone's settings to see how much load is being applied while browsing. I know that if I browse Imgur for a while, the Android battery monitor tells me that Imgur uses most of the battery for that period of time. So those kinds of things aren't light on a device.
 
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COLGeek

COLGeek

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Actually, all wireless adapters (both wifi and cellular) generate heat when in use. This is not just a function of the devices CPU. Also, depending on signal strength, the heat may increase to compensate for a weaker signal.

So, some heat generation is perfectly normal.

 
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rhysiam

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Mar 24, 2013
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I'll add that the screen draws significant power too. Combination of screen, CPU + GPU (particularly for intensive web pages) and the (especially cellular) wireless draw a fairly significant amount of power.

I have an old iPhone4 which (even 2 years ago when I actually used it) was struggling to get through a day of light-moderate use. I'm now using it as a second phone for a project I'm on and I've basically turned off 3G and am just using it as a dumb phone. Now that same battery lasts a week easily, I'm making a bunch of phone calls, sending text messages, occasional internet over wifi, etc, but no web browsing and absolutely no 3G... makes the world of difference to battery life.
 
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cub_fanatic

cub_fanatic

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Nov 21, 2012
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Depending on which CPU you have (ARM, Intel?) and if it is ARM depending on who made it and which model it is (Nvidia, Apple, Qualcomm, etc.) as well as how new it is, your CPU might have a "big/ little" design. Basically, a big/ little multi-core CPU design has the latest ARM cores (like A15) that are very high performance and are only used when gaming or at short bursts to speed up an application or browser and little cores (like A7) which are low powered and usually made on an older architecture but which use newer manufacturing processes to make them extremely power efficient. A typical big/ little quad core design will use 2 bigs and 2 littles and uses the bigs as little as possible. Older versions of this concept include the Tegra 3 but it had a full quad core and a 5th little core which was extremely underpowered and would only be used when idle. Look up the model number of your phone and post it here. Or, if you know which CPU it is. If your CPU is a newer one, chances are it is of a big/ little configuration. If it is, you might have your power settings turned all the way up and it is set to use all cores all the time making it hotter and less power efficient. Check the power settings and set it to either balanced (medium) or power save. You can also DL apps for this like DS Battey saver and Cooler Master. DS Battery Saver turns off all the radios such as wifi, bluetooth and 3/4G when idle and wakes them up every couple minutes to update. It leaves phone functions on at all times. Cooler Master lets you select from a list of apps running in the background to turn off. It also monitors your CPU temps. Both should significantly reduce your phone's CPU usage, increase battery life and decrease temps.
 
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M

MobileEditor

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Nov 13, 2014
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This is likely the culprit. You may also notice that you get significantly less battery life when you have low signal strength, since the radios are forced to run at full power. When I'm in a convention center (almost zero signal strength), I'll sometimes turn off Wi-Fi and turn on Airplane mode to conserve power otherwise my battery wouldn't last the whole day.

- Matt
 
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