Phones in the summer Phones in the summer

Temperature Warning: How to Protect Your Phone From the Heat

As the summer temps and humidity rise in New England, it’s time to take a look into what the heat really does to your devices, and how it can be prevented.

Temperature shifts and extremes can actually influence how your phone functions. Whether it be extreme heat or extreme cold, protecting your phone from temperature swings is important to its overall health. As the summer temps and humidity continue to rise here in New England, we decided it’s time to take a look into what the heat really does to your devices, and how heat damage to your phone can be prevented.

What the heat does to your phone

Phones, tablets, and laptops left out in the heat can all be impacted by heat. The internal components of your phone or any device will become damaged, causing data loss, dead batteries, and in some cases the lithium battery will leak, or bubble up and expand or explode. Not only is this damaging to your device – for obvious reasons – it can be damaging to you. Un-anticipated explosions generally don’t mix well with much. Luckily, a large portion of phones out today have a warning screen to let you know before this happens.

Keeping your phone cool

If you’d like to never see that screen (or if you see it and want to know how to fix it) here are a few steps to take to ensure the safety of your device, and yourself.

  1. Avoid leaving your device in your car. Heat rises much fast on the inside of a closed up car. Make sure your devices are not left behind, and don’t forget about your GPS!
  2. Turn your device off, or turn off any apps, Bluetooth, wifi, or LTE. iPhones are programmed to do some of this when the initial warning screen comes on. However, if you need your device on and the temperature is rising, closing any unnecessary programs will let the battery relax a little, and not heat up so quickly.
  3. Keep your devices separate. Carrying around your iPad, iPhone, and GPS in your bag? Keeping them all together is bound to conduct more heat than just your phone. Try to keep them as separate as possible to allow maximum air flow to each device.
  4. Don’t cool it too fast. If your phone overheats, your initial reaction is going to be to rush it to the coldest place you can find. However, rushing the cooling process can cause condensation to get trapped on the inside of the devices and inevitably, water damage.

Preventative products and accessories

Surprisingly, there are very limited temperature resistant cases out there. Even the Otterbox, that makes cases that protect your phone from nearly everything, doesn’t have a heat resistant option.

I eventually found a company called Salt that makes the first thermally-protective cases for Apple products that are resilient to extreme heat AND cold. Their stylish thermal technology was inspired by NASA spacecrafts designed to withstand the heat of a launch, and the cold of outer space. Hopefully they start making cases for ALL devices soon!

When the going gets hot

If your device does overheat make sure you do not touch it. It can burn you. Try following the steps above to cool it down. If the battery does leak, you will begin to notice corrosion coming out of the battery compartment, or on the battery itself inside the compartment. The bad news is after battery leakage occurs, it’s difficult to ensure no other part of your phone is damaged. Cleaning so close to the inside is likely to cause water damage – and where you can’t reach with your cleaner, the acid probably did already and is wreaking damage on your phone’s components.

The good news is that at Gazelle, we don’t mind! We will still purchase your phone from you, so you don’t have to worry about the hot, hundred dollar mistake you made. You can use the trade-in to purchase a nice [cold] new phone.

What are some ways that you keep your phone cool and calm?

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