Android Phone Temperature: What Is Normal? (3 Cases)

Android Phone Temperature: What Is Normal?

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Here’s which Android phone temperatures are normal:

The safe operating temperature range for most Android phones is between 32 and 95 °F (0 and 35 °C). 

Any time your phone is between these temperatures, it can be considered normal. 

Another way to think about it is that the phone should never burn or freeze you, so anything between freezing and your body temperature is fine.

So if you want to learn all about your Android phone’s temperatures, then you’re in the right place.

Keep reading!

Android Phone Temperature: What Is Normal? (3 Cases)

What Are Normal Temperatures for Most Android Phones? (3 Scenarios)

Normal temperature is a bit of a vague term. 

Really, the normal or safe temperatures are going to depend on what you’re doing and which specific phone you have. 

Every manufacturer sets the safe operating temperatures for their phones, and even among the same manufacturer, those numbers change with each model.

So, let me give you a couple of ideas to think about. 

Then, I’ll take you through some specific scenarios and the temperatures you should expect to see.

First is the idea of the ambient temperature. 

Think of it this way. 

If your phone is turned off, how hot or cold will it be? 

It’ll be the same temperature as the room it’s in, right? 

This is what ambient temperature is describing. 

Wherever you are, the air has a temperature, and that’s the ambient temperature. 

It’s also how hot you would expect your phone to be.

So, one normal temperature for an Android phone is room temperature, which is usually around 72 °F (22 °C).

On the other hand, using a phone can make it warm. 

So, how hot should a phone get? 

As I said before, that depends on the model. 

But, I can give you a ballpark average. 

For most phones, the safe operating temperatures will be between 32 and 95 °F (0 and 35 °C). 

Normal temperatures are anywhere between those numbers.

That said, we can look at three specific ways you might use your phone and see what temperatures make sense. 

For that, I’m going to break this into sections covering a phone at idle, a phone that is charging, and a phone that is under heavy use.

#1 When at Idle

An idle phone is one that is turned on but that you aren’t actively using. 

That might make you think that an idle phone isn’t doing anything, but that’s not exactly the case. 

Idle phones actually carry out a number of operations, and because of that, they do generate some of their own heat in this state.

Some of the common actions of an idle phone include verifying connection to the cellular network, checking for messages, downloading messages from servers, and uploading information to servers.

The good news is that modern phones are designed to handle all of this very efficiently. 

So while these actions do generate heat and drain your battery a little, they aren’t exactly taxing the phone.

With all of that in mind, a typical android phone will idle close to the current ambient temperature. 

So if you have your phone in your bedroom, while it’s idling, it will be the same temperature as your bedroom

But I also said that the phone does generate some heat when at idle. 

Usually, that heat dissipates very quickly, so the phone will rarely be more than a couple of degrees warmer than the room it is in.

#2 While Charging

A charging phone is going to be close to the ambient temperature of the room it is in, but charging will add a few degrees (up to 41 °F / 5 °C) to the phone’s temperature. 

So, if the room is 70 °F (21 °C), then a charging phone will usually be 71 to 75 °F (up to 24 °C). 

Let’s talk about why.

For starters, a charging phone is at idle, so it’s generating a little bit of heat as it always does. 

This accounts for a small part of the temperature differences I just listed.

More than that, charging the phone generates heat. 

There are really three different kinds of charging to consider. 

With standard charging, electricity passes through a cable in order to charge your battery. 

This creates heat, but for a healthy battery, this creates the least amount of heat of the three charging options we’re discussing right now.

The next option is fast charging. 

In order to charge batteries faster, this method uses more electric power.

Since more power is passing through the battery in a shorter amount of time, fast charging usually generates more heat. 

A faster charge is going to push your phone’s temperature up to the higher parts of this range.

The third option is wireless charging. 

With this, magnets are used to induce a current in the battery and charge it. 

This process also generates heat, and in a lot of cases, wireless charging defaults to fast charging. 

If so, wireless charging will run the phone hotter than standard charging.

Still, unless there is something significantly wrong with the battery, none of these methods will make the phone too hot. 

They might make the battery considerably warmer than the temperatures I listed, but the phone’s overall internal temperature will usually stay low.

#3 During Heavy Use

Using the phone a lot is what really generates the most heat. 

When the phone carries out operations, a lot of electricity has to move through circuits to make everything work. 

So, the harder your phone works, the hotter it gets.

Operations that work the phone hardest are ones that involve a lot of video (like watching ultra-high definition videos or playing games) and searching for signals to connect to the wireless carrier. 

These are also both activities that drain the phone’s battery the fastest, and that’s an easy way to think about heat. 

If the things you do with your phone drain the battery fast, then they produce a lot of heat too.

In terms of numbers, the peak temperatures you should see when your phone gets hot are between 95 and 113 °F (35 and 45 °C). 

Coincidentally, these are also the upper limits of safe operating temperatures for a phone. 

Not all Androids are rated to run all the way up to 113 °F (45 °C), but some manufacturers still classify that as a safe temperature. 

Anything above that is arguably bad for the phone.