Depending on which hemisphere you call home, you might be deep in the middle of summer right now, and that means everything is hot, hot, hot. If we’re talking beach days and vacation vibes, “hot” sounds pretty good — but maybe not so much in the context of our favorite smartphones. Don’t get us wrong — we’re always on the lookout for the next hot new phone — but here we mean more the “thermal runaway” kind of thing, which is less than ideal.
Some phones (and phone-makers) have really developed a reputation for running hotter than the rest of the pack, and that’s not a behavior without consequence. Phones start complaining when they get too hot for safe operation and they can dial back on performance and functionality when you push things too hard, too long. When Google introduced its own Tensor chips with the launch of the Pixel 6 series, everyone was curious to see how they’d compare against components from the likes of Qualcomm — and it didn’t take long for users to start noticing how hot their phones ran.
That trend has continued in the years since, but it can be difficult to get a full sense of just how widespread an issue this is — complaints have a tendency to get amplified, and it’s not like you ever hear someone loudly proclaiming how cool their phone is running. In the interest of bringing a little more data to the table, earlier this month we asked for your input on the Pixel overheating issue — and a whole lot of you indicated this is a very real problem.
Does your Pixel suffer from overheating?
By and large, the vast majority of Pixel owners who responded to our poll are well familiar with overheating issues on their phones. Granted, there is probably still some measure of participation bias here, but given the significant number of negative responses that did come in, this is very much feeling like confirmation that overheating on Tensor-powered Pixel phones is indeed a capital-p problem.
It’s not like Google doesn’t know any of this is going on. We’ve seen evidence that Google is working on Adaptive Thermal functionality that would attempt to mitigate heat-related issues in software. We hope those efforts pan out because nearly three-quarters of the 1,800-some responses we got indicated first-hand experience with overheating Pixels. And if Adaptive Thermal isn’t enough, Google would really benefit from thinking long and hard about implementing new physical systems for temperature management — even if that’s just a more capable passive solution.
We got some great responses in our poll’s comments, and there’s clearly a lot of passion around this issue. While some of you report overheating issues going back to early generations, it’s really the Pixel 6, 7, and 8 models that the majority of you have noticed running hot — considering how that aligns with the move to Tensor, that’s not exactly surprising. That’s clearly led to a bit of resentment, but we also heard a fair amount of optimism for the future — especially if our expectations for a TSMC-made Tensor G5 pan out.
The ball’s in your court, Google. It’s cool to be cool.
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