I9505 overheating? Check this, you never know...

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fabecoool

Senior Member
Feb 23, 2011
66
23
Hi everyone,

I just wanted to let you know about what I have found out.

A couple days ago my I9505 started to overheat a lot, although it was not used and in my pocket. At first I thought it was the battery, so I switched it off and took the battery pack out, but it turns out it wasn't hot... but the phone was! Especially the upper part (around the camera, and even on the screen side). I waited and restarted the phone. After a while it did it again and my phone rebooted by itself after a few hours, which was a complete surprise: I have been running the last stable version of SlimBean, which is awesome and really stable for the past couple of months (the reason why although I have tried some KK based rom I ended up going back to 4.3).

Anyway, I though maybe something was wrong with my settings and I decided I would test a few KitKat ROMs, and so I did:
- SlimKat
- OmniRom
- CarbonRom
- AOKP
- CM11
- and a few more...

With all of them, I experienced the same issue. And I had them all for a few hours, because I know at the beginning the phone always retrieves data and apps from google servers, so I figured it was bound to heat, but not that much! And the random reboots happened in all of them.

This morning, I was ready to flash back to a stock ROM to have the phone serviced (I have knox tripped but I don't care, I don't think they would mess around with me about it here in Europe, at least from what I've heard, and anyway, I'd just tell them that Kies did it ;)), when I realised that Hey! the day before it started, I was unable to copy/paste all the data from my 32GB microSD card to my computer using the USB cable. I would systematically get an error saying that the device has been disconnected from the computer. I had even wondered if my USB cable was damaged, but seeing that the phone charged alright, I did not pay too much attention to it.

I started to investigate the card and retested some ROMs I had tested previously. This time I would not connect, but I did try with and without the card, and BINGO! every time I put the card in, it would overheat.

I then tested my card with an adapter in my computer, and there seemed to be something wrong with it, because even then the copy operation would hang! So I formatted the card (after I had backed up everything I could), and put it into the phone, where I formatted it again with the phone. Now the card has been (albeit empty) for a few hours in the phone, and no overheating or random reboot in sight :) (running the latest stable SlimKat).

So if your phone starts to overheat, especially the upper part, check what happens when you remove the SD card.

Hope I'll have helped someone with this. If you don't hear more about me in this thread, it means everything's alright. I'll start re-loading things on the same microSD card. I'll see if it is still faulty or if the phone heats up. If it does, I'll try with another microSD and see if it does the same.

Cheers!

Fa
 

armaan.ag

Senior Member
Jun 23, 2010
178
131
gurgaon
Do tell me if the micro sd card is the problem. I have this overheating issue since a year and haven't been able to sove it. Yet. But i remember trying to rovercome this issue by the micro sd csrd method, it hadn't worked..

Anyways, this issue with s4 is too common, i know 10-15 people with the same issue, so i think its a hardware fault..

Sent from my GT-I9500 using xda premium
 

ugly_bob

Member
May 10, 2010
41
10
Thanks for this, very useful advice. Just recently I was having some issues with my phone not writing to my SD card and the card inexplicably filling up with data. It turned out to be corrupted data in the Android folder, so I backed up my stuff, formatted the card etc and that fixed it (as well as freeing up about 6gb of space on the card)

After reading your post it occurred to me that corrupted data may have been causing overheating in your phone, due to the card constantly being read over and over.

I didn't experience any overheating myself but it could well be the same cause. Either way, definitely worth checking if you're having overheating issues.
 

ench18

Senior Member
Mar 9, 2011
473
192
Manila, Philippines
Very interesting. I for one reformat my SDcard every 2 to 3 months. Just a simple maintenance that i like to do. This is something good to keep in mind and thank you for sharing mate. :)
 

fabecoool

Senior Member
Feb 23, 2011
66
23
Do tell me if the micro sd card is the problem. I have this overheating issue since a year and haven't been able to sove it. Yet. But i remember trying to rovercome this issue by the micro sd csrd method, it hadn't worked..

Anyways, this issue with s4 is too common, i know 10-15 people with the same issue, so i think its a hardware fault..

Sent from my GT-I9500 using xda premium

So! Some more info on this (just in case someone's interested), but first FYI Armaan.ag, the card seemed to be the issue.

I had another microSD card of the same capacity, so I copied every single file that was on the faulty card to my computer, and I noticed there were two mp3 files that were in fact not really mp3 files, but rather some junk that the phone must have created at some point.

I deleted these two files and copied all the rest to the new card, and it works just fine. So at least it's not a hardware issue on the phone: it reads the card content fine and does not overheat (well, IMHO a phone should not overheat when it encounters a corrupted file, but that's another issue)

As for the first (faulty) card, I have formatted it (full format) and checked it for errors. Windows tells me it is fine. I'm now copying all files back to it, I'll test it when it's ready. If it still crashes my phone, then I'll try on my wife's phone (I9300) and see what it does before I return it for exchange (the card is not even 3 months old).

Cheers!

Fa
 

ugly_bob

Member
May 10, 2010
41
10
(well, IMHO a phone should not overheat when it encounters a corrupted file, but that's another issue)

When the OS is indexing files on the sd card the CPU will be working, if there is corrupted data on the card, it can interfere with the data indexing and cause the OS to read the card over and over. This will keep the CPU active for longer than it needs to be, and when the CPU is active for extended periods of time it can cause overheating.

Alternatively, the overheating could have been caused by a physical fault with the sd card reader or the sd card itself. Either way let us know how you get on.
 

edwardciasico

Member
Aug 16, 2012
22
1
Hi everyone,

I just wanted to let you know about what I have found out.

A couple days ago my I9505 started to overheat a lot, although it was not used and in my pocket. At first I thought it was the battery, so I switched it off and took the battery pack out, but it turns out it wasn't hot... but the phone was! Especially the upper part (around the camera, and even on the screen side). I waited and restarted the phone. After a while it did it again and my phone rebooted by itself after a few hours, which was a complete surprise: I have been running the last stable version of SlimBean, which is awesome and really stable for the past couple of months (the reason why although I have tried some KK based rom I ended up going back to 4.3).

Anyway, I though maybe something was wrong with my settings and I decided I would test a few KitKat ROMs, and so I did:
- SlimKat
- OmniRom
- CarbonRom
- AOKP
- CM11
- and a few more...

With all of them, I experienced the same issue. And I had them all for a few hours, because I know at the beginning the phone always retrieves data and apps from google servers, so I figured it was bound to heat, but not that much! And the random reboots happened in all of them.

This morning, I was ready to flash back to a stock ROM to have the phone serviced (I have knox tripped but I don't care, I don't think they would mess around with me about it here in Europe, at least from what I've heard, and anyway, I'd just tell them that Kies did it ;)), when I realised that Hey! the day before it started, I was unable to copy/paste all the data from my 32GB microSD card to my computer using the USB cable. I would systematically get an error saying that the device has been disconnected from the computer. I had even wondered if my USB cable was damaged, but seeing that the phone charged alright, I did not pay too much attention to it.

I started to investigate the card and retested some ROMs I had tested previously. This time I would not connect, but I did try with and without the card, and BINGO! every time I put the card in, it would overheat.

I then tested my card with an adapter in my computer, and there seemed to be something wrong with it, because even then the copy operation would hang! So I formatted the card (after I had backed up everything I could), and put it into the phone, where I formatted it again with the phone. Now the card has been (albeit empty) for a few hours in the phone, and no overheating or random reboot in sight :) (running the latest stable SlimKat).

So if your phone starts to overheat, especially the upper part, check what happens when you remove the SD card.

Hope I'll have helped someone with this. If you don't hear more about me in this thread, it means everything's alright. I'll start re-loading things on the same microSD card. I'll see if it is still faulty or if the phone heats up. If it does, I'll try with another microSD and see if it does the same.

Cheers!

Fa

Thanks for this! :D
 

dazza7111

Senior Member
Apr 28, 2008
633
45
Newcastle
Google plus heated my s4, check settings and unchecked other folders.
Maybe upload on WiFi only. And when charging?

Sent from my GT-I9505 using XDA Free mobile app
 
Last edited:

fabecoool

Senior Member
Feb 23, 2011
66
23
Everything fine now

Just thought I'd let you know after re-formatting the card:
Complete format with windows, then erase card on the SGS4, which then complained that my card must be formatted, so I formatted it with the phone.
I've been going with the original "faulty" card for more than a week now, and I have had no overheating issue. All the files (except the corrupted files) that were on the card when the problem occurred are back on it. And no issue.

Hope this helps!

Cheers!

Fa
 

charlie878

Senior Member
Feb 13, 2012
106
34
Just thought I'd let you know after re-formatting the card:
Complete format with windows, then erase card on the SGS4, which then complained that my card must be formatted, so I formatted it with the phone.
I've been going with the original "faulty" card for more than a week now, and I have had no overheating issue. All the files (except the corrupted files) that were on the card when the problem occurred are back on it. And no issue.

Hope this helps!

Cheers!

Fa

1.this is a 7.9mm phone
2.the back cover is thin as a sheet of paper
3.the sdSlot has been installed behind the processor (for speed reasons) and it's made of metal components so there s heat transmission

just replace your cover with the stock one of the 9505 black edition and tell me ;) ..anyway i wanna try this solution tnx in advance
 
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fabecoool

Senior Member
Feb 23, 2011
66
23
1.this is a 7.9mm phone
2.the back cover is thin as a sheet of paper
3.the sdSlot has been installed behind the processor (for speed reasons) and it's made of metal components so there s heat transmission

just replace your cover with the stock one of the 9505 black edition and tell me ;) ..anyway i wanna try this solution tnx in advance

You're not wrong at all, but the fact here is that there was a real problem: it was really hot AND there was a huge drain on the battery, which changing the back cover wouldn't have solved.

Besides, I no longer need to do anything, since after formatting the card, it's back to normal, i.e. no overheating. But you're right that heat reaches the surface of the back cover when e.g. downloading or watching streamed videos for some time.

Cheers!

Fa
 

ThisTechGuy

Senior Member
Dec 22, 2013
62
6
The i9500 overheats too, so I'll cehck if the SD Card is the problem next time it happens. Thanks!
 

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  • 7
    Hi everyone,

    I just wanted to let you know about what I have found out.

    A couple days ago my I9505 started to overheat a lot, although it was not used and in my pocket. At first I thought it was the battery, so I switched it off and took the battery pack out, but it turns out it wasn't hot... but the phone was! Especially the upper part (around the camera, and even on the screen side). I waited and restarted the phone. After a while it did it again and my phone rebooted by itself after a few hours, which was a complete surprise: I have been running the last stable version of SlimBean, which is awesome and really stable for the past couple of months (the reason why although I have tried some KK based rom I ended up going back to 4.3).

    Anyway, I though maybe something was wrong with my settings and I decided I would test a few KitKat ROMs, and so I did:
    - SlimKat
    - OmniRom
    - CarbonRom
    - AOKP
    - CM11
    - and a few more...

    With all of them, I experienced the same issue. And I had them all for a few hours, because I know at the beginning the phone always retrieves data and apps from google servers, so I figured it was bound to heat, but not that much! And the random reboots happened in all of them.

    This morning, I was ready to flash back to a stock ROM to have the phone serviced (I have knox tripped but I don't care, I don't think they would mess around with me about it here in Europe, at least from what I've heard, and anyway, I'd just tell them that Kies did it ;)), when I realised that Hey! the day before it started, I was unable to copy/paste all the data from my 32GB microSD card to my computer using the USB cable. I would systematically get an error saying that the device has been disconnected from the computer. I had even wondered if my USB cable was damaged, but seeing that the phone charged alright, I did not pay too much attention to it.

    I started to investigate the card and retested some ROMs I had tested previously. This time I would not connect, but I did try with and without the card, and BINGO! every time I put the card in, it would overheat.

    I then tested my card with an adapter in my computer, and there seemed to be something wrong with it, because even then the copy operation would hang! So I formatted the card (after I had backed up everything I could), and put it into the phone, where I formatted it again with the phone. Now the card has been (albeit empty) for a few hours in the phone, and no overheating or random reboot in sight :) (running the latest stable SlimKat).

    So if your phone starts to overheat, especially the upper part, check what happens when you remove the SD card.

    Hope I'll have helped someone with this. If you don't hear more about me in this thread, it means everything's alright. I'll start re-loading things on the same microSD card. I'll see if it is still faulty or if the phone heats up. If it does, I'll try with another microSD and see if it does the same.

    Cheers!

    Fa
    1
    Just thought I'd let you know after re-formatting the card:
    Complete format with windows, then erase card on the SGS4, which then complained that my card must be formatted, so I formatted it with the phone.
    I've been going with the original "faulty" card for more than a week now, and I have had no overheating issue. All the files (except the corrupted files) that were on the card when the problem occurred are back on it. And no issue.

    Hope this helps!

    Cheers!

    Fa

    1.this is a 7.9mm phone
    2.the back cover is thin as a sheet of paper
    3.the sdSlot has been installed behind the processor (for speed reasons) and it's made of metal components so there s heat transmission

    just replace your cover with the stock one of the 9505 black edition and tell me ;) ..anyway i wanna try this solution tnx in advance