I’ve had a Pixel 4a for ~3 years at this point. I had to replace it some time last year because I had lost my original in a lake. T-Mobile gave me whichever lower-end Pixel there was at the time and I immediately gave it back because of the offputting amount of warmth it produced doing very little. When the time does come to properly upgrade, how would I go about searching for phones that run cool? I’ve been thinking about my next choice to be a jump-ship from the Pixel series given my, uh, experience (there was a bit more that I didn’t like about it)
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Notebookcheck.net, despite the name, also reviews phones. They use an IR camera to check the temperature of the phone in different areas, so you can see how specific phones handle under load.
If you wanna run cool, you gotta run on heavy, heavy fuel.
Mark Knopfler
Buy something older or lower-end. Most high-end flagships these days run hot.
Do you have any particular recommendations?
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Unfortunately generally the “slower” chip sets also run cooler so many flagships will have heating issues to contend with depending on ambient temperature.
I hate my P6 Pro for that reason, and will be doing the same as OP and avoiding any poorly heat throttling phones in the future.
I’m tired of having my videos shut off mid shoot because of heating issues, or issues while using GPS on the motorcycle.
Read GSM arena reviews, they test for temperature. Look for 600 series snapdragons or similar.
Aside from that, any high end phone chases power over efficieny. If you can deal with something bigger, more phone will mean an overrall cooler surface.
You can also look at specific SOCs to see how users are liking them. The SD855 was the last chip that I know was very balanced between power and efficiency. The SD8gen1 is a hot bastard, but now the SD8gen2 seems to have ended up another magic chip that runs cool despite its power.
I’d say the 865 was the last “good” Qualcomm chip before the 8 gen 1 broke everything. It can be found in the Galaxy S/Note 20 generation.
Pretty much any soc made by samsung is hot and slow. The return to TSMC with the 8+ gen 1 we saw the thermal improvements.
I still daily a SD865 (LG V60) to this day and while it’s losing steam in newer mobile gaming titles, it’s still flawless for daily usage. Can’t think of any complaint really.
