phone feels warm sometimes after charging

By Troy, 13 July, 2023

Forum
Apple Hardware and Compatible Accessories

I have an IPhone SE running the latest update. I've noticed not all the time but sometimes my phone will feel warm after a full charge. Is this normal or is my charger going bad? I use a regular lightening cord to charge and my battery health is at 97 percent.
Thanks

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Comments

By OldBear on Monday, July 24, 2023 - 09:56

I have that same model. It can get warm while charging. If it gets too warm because the air temperature where you are charging it is hot, it will stop charging and put a notification on the lock screen. Too hot is somewhere around 90F (32C) ambient air--which is actually considered cool air in the summer where I live--and it stops charging at about 80%.

By Enes Deniz on Monday, July 24, 2023 - 09:56

Put the device on a hard surface, preferably one that conducts heat well enough, like metal, so that the device's heat is transferred to the surface and the surface cools down the device more effectively.

By soni on Monday, July 24, 2023 - 09:56

Mine is doing the same thing and the battery is draining beyond belief. It looks like I'm going to have to take it in to be looked at according to Apple. Anyone else having this problem. I have the same model. Even in low power mode, the battery drains several percentages.

By Seyoon Choi on Monday, July 24, 2023 - 09:56

I heard comments like these a lot lately, naturally your phone would warm up as there are energy flowing into the phone to charge up the battery. The short answer is this is unavoidable, it's the way battery chemistry have worked for years, and you'll likely find that it feels even warmer if the phone is in use, while it's being charged.

As others suggested, removing a thick, protective case to allow the phone to cool off and ventilate may help. Try restarting the phone, power down and holding side button to start up again. If the phone gets too hot, charging will pause to protect the battery's internal temperature and will resume charging once the phone cools down a bit. Batteries tend to suffer the most prominent damage from heat and that's irreversible.
if the issue persists, backing up your phone and restoring to factory clears up any issues there may be.

Hope this helps.

By Andy Lane on Monday, July 24, 2023 - 09:56

Firstly as has been said, remove insulating phone cases, place flat on a heat conducting surface making sure as much of the back or front, (doesn’t matter which) is touching as possible. Use a lower power adaptor. The old iPhone adaptors only supply 5W. The later ones with USB C are 18 or 20w and will heat the phone significantly more. An iPad charger is 10W so for least heating use the old iPhone charger at 5W. The phone will do all its heavy lifting processing, updating apps processing photo’s caching search results etc while charging so it will heat up but the cooler you can keep it the longer the battery will keep its high capacity. I have been known to get an ice pack out the freezer in very hot weather to keep mine cool. You don’t want the phone to get too cold but getting very hot is incredibly damaging to batteries. I’ve also placed mine in front of a fan which works pretty well too. My iPhone 14 Pro Max is 10 months old and has 99% battery capacity so I think it’s definitely working.

By Saqib on Monday, July 24, 2023 - 09:56

Firstly, remove the case from your phone and do not use a MagSafe charger as the phone will be constantly warm when magnetically charged. I have an iPhone 14 Pro Max and the phone cools down after it reaches up to 70%! Every morning I charge my phone when it has over 50% battery remaining but if I charge it every couple of days, it can get quite warm as it seems to get quite warm if the battery is being charged from 10% as it is charging rapidly from that point until it slows down after it reaches 60%.

By Andy Lane on Monday, July 24, 2023 - 09:56

MagSafe is only approximately 70% efficient which means on a 20W charger theres 6W of heat going straight into your phone. The best way to charge a battery for longevity is not to charge over 80% and not to discharge under 25% thats too much hassle for most people but it does take advantage of not stressing the chemistry on either the anode or cathode which will make the battery last longer so its your choice once you know what to do. I wish Apple would tell people about this and give the option to stop charging at 80% but hey, where theres money to be made… To be fair, they do try to hold the battery at 80% over night and only charge fully close to your waking up time but giving an option would be better IMHO.

By Enes Deniz on Monday, July 24, 2023 - 09:56

Well, I've set up some automations for things like notifying me and playing a sound once the battery level reaches 80% so that I can unplug the charger, and switching to 3G once it's below 20%. You can even automate multiple actions at once, like switching off bluetooth, enabling Wi-Fi to connect to a Wi-Fi network instead of using a celular connection, and setting the brightness to 0% once the battery level is below a certain threshold. By the way, one more problem is that we can't customize how and when we receive battery warnings, in a broader sense. Not only while charging but also when the battery level is lower than a certain value do I want to get notified according to my own preferences. Why only 10 and 20%, and why don't we have other options like notifications and/or sounds and vibration?

By Wayne Scott Jr on Monday, July 24, 2023 - 09:56

My battery at peak performance is at 93 percent. I'm going to try the suggestions for keeping my phone cool while charging. My battery tends to run down pretty fast. Apple tells me it's my software; they ran a diagnostic on my phone. It's getting extremely frustrating when the battery goes down very fast.

By Siobhan on Monday, July 24, 2023 - 09:56

If you're running a beta don't worry about it. I'm running one now and though I'm sure I've not been fantastic to my battery, I know it will be ok when the stable release comes out. Forgive me, I can't remember if you are running a beta or not. If not, so sorry about my suggestion.

By Ash Rein on Monday, July 24, 2023 - 09:56

MagSafe is generally safe and it works well There are MagSafe chargers that charge just as fast and efficiently as wired chargers. For example, look at the following:

ESR for MagSafe Charger Stand (HaloLock), 3-in-1 MagSafe Charging Station with CryoBoost, Magnetic Wireless Charger for iPhone 14/13/12 Series https://a.co/d/4Wk80ub

Aand

ESR HaloLock 2-in-1 Wireless Charger with CryoBoost, Compatible with MagSafe Charger Stand, Phone-Cooling Fast Charging Compatible with iPhone 14/13/12, AirPods Pro/3/2, with Adapter, Arctic White https://a.co/d/8hGPNkc

These charge phones very quickly and very efficiently. The built-in fans draw out heat well. I've been using the charger for over two years and my battery capacity is consistently at around 98% and I use it very heavily

By Andy Lane on Monday, July 24, 2023 - 09:56

While you are correct that MagSafe containing a fan is a good way to remove the issue of overheating the battery, unfortunately it’s not correct to say this is as efficient. Wired connection is approaching 100% efficiency with inefficiency in the battery charging running somewhere around 5% No wireless charger is even close to that efficiency though. MagSafe is the best at around 70% because it ensures the coils are as close to perfect alignment as possible however thats as good as wireless charging can get. There will always be inefficiencies due to imperfect capture of EM radiation and Eddie currents and swirl in the magnetic fields. These are currently unavoidable and likely always will be. MagSafe with cooling is a good solution but it’s definitely not efficient. I did the exact same thing you did and bought a MagSafe charger with a fan a few years ago. I then realised I still had a wire so it wasn’t wireless and I was only needing the fan because of the inherent inefficiency of the technology that didn’t remove wires. Until Apple force us to use MagSafe, I’d rather have the full 20W instead of 14 and a fan to handle the losses. For anyone who prefers to leak 6W of heat then require a fan to address the problem that didn’t exist before they removed the wire that they didn’t actually remove, MagSafe is a fantastic option but for anyone who would rather get the full power coming out of the charger going into their battery and not need to deal with the bulk of a fan with a wire going into it for their wireless charging needs then wired is still the best option. Feel free to make your own choices but not based on floored arguments.

By Ash Rein on Monday, July 24, 2023 - 09:56

I’m genuinely not interested in numbers. Something from a few years ago works differently than something from last year or this year. People leave their phones plugged in and that causes battery complications. In most cases, people plug in their phone overnight and that does a great deal of damage to the phone and its battery. At least with the fan, there is no overheating issue of any kind. I’m as heavy a iPhone user as anyone gets. I use it for personal life, work, research, etc. My opinion is that the chargers I provided are fundamentally as good as it gets in terms of charging the phone. Both quickly and efficiently. Plugging in the phone is problematic at best. One way or another, Apple is going to force people to use MagSafe. I'd rather get ahead of it then be forced into it.

I'm sure that wattage and percentages are very interesting for some people. And the vast majority of people aren't going to understand it or care to even try. This person is literally asking about their phone feeling warm when they charge it. It's something that surprising them. If they were worried about percentages and statistics, they would've googled it. Instead, they came here for a human interaction about what to do. the only way to keep their phone cool is to use a cooling fan with combined charger.. and as far as I am aware, the only chargers that have cooling fans are the ones that are MagSafe. Or at least have magnetic charging. There is literally no other way. If they plug in their phone, their phone is gonna feel warm.

By Ash Rein on Monday, July 24, 2023 - 09:56

What bothers me is that instead of looking at these chargers and seeing how they charge the phone and what the benefits are I got hit with something that only applies to the general MagSafe experience. I didn't just choose a charger randomly. And I don't post that often. I generally post when I think there's something important to be said. if I provide something, I would rather somebody take a look and familiarize themselves with it and then comment instead of just flatly pushing it off. These chargers aren't actually even MagSafe. And they charge higher than the 15 W MagSafe is known for. And then there's no optimization because the software is recognizing that the phone is not overheating. So the charge time is stable throughout.

By Andy Lane on Monday, July 24, 2023 - 09:56

I understand the charger works well for you but I was giving an accurate answer. What I objected to was being told to ignore my post when it was based on a full understanding of the underlying technologies. I didn’t quote all the numbers and more technical information above because I understand most aren’t interested in that. I did say at the end of my post that its everyone’s choice to make for themselves but using a word like efficiency has a specific meaning so I corrected that mistake so someone wouldn’t think they were working from accurate information instead of a personal choice which everyone is entitled to. If someone has a better understanding than I do of the technical reasons for something then I’m all ears, I want to learn and absorb what they know but being told to ignore my comment by someone working from their personal choice instead of understanding needed addressing.

By Andy Lane on Monday, July 24, 2023 - 09:56

I forgot to mension, you can buy cooling solutions for your phone that don’t have wireless charging built in. I have 3 different kinds. One has a fan with suckers that suck onto the back of the phone, it charges an internal battery which powers it for a good few hours, I also have a replica console controller that the phone clips into, the same arrangement. Internal battery powers the fans, that has 2 fans and the last one is whats called a peltear device which uses an electric current to drive heat energy away from a cooling pad. It’s the same technology those tiny mini fridges use. It can really absorb a lot of heat but it requires a micro USB connection as it doesn’t have an internal battery. Loads of different solutions are available if it’s just phone cooling you’re looking for without the extra heat of wireless charging. If anyone would like links I can provide them.

By Andy Lane on Monday, July 24, 2023 - 09:56

I’ll sort them out from my amazon purchases.

By Andy Lane on Monday, July 24, 2023 - 09:56

TRILINK Phone Cooler for Gaming with Dual Cooling Fans - Advanced Phone Cooling Technology - RGB LEDs - Ultra-quiet - Output Function - LED Temperature Display for Android iPhone iOS Game Radiator https://amzn.eu/d/6xgieVa

That one is similar to the game pad replica version I have. It’s not the exact one as it’s not available anymore. It basically just has 2 little fans that point at the back of your phone to cool it down.

DollaTek Phone cooling fan mobile phone semiconductor cooler, cooling fan for cool phone temperatures, smooth 4-6.5 inch mobile phones - Black https://amzn.eu/d/cjg4wqJ

This is the new version of the active cooling peltear device that works like a mini fridge. It doesn’t just use fans but concentrates the heat energy of your phone into a hot side where it’s blown away by a fan. If you don’t put it on your phone it will start to get very cold to the touch, like you’ve just taken it out of the freezer. It’s not the most elegant design but it does what it says very well.

Update. I just took the solid state cooler out the drawer and plugged it in. In about 15 minutes the first ice crystals are starting to form on the cooling pad. Obviously on your phone it wouldn’t do that because theres a far greater thermal mass to cool than the few grams of the pad but it shows how affective it is at removing heat energy.