What could be wrong?

[crammpa]

I did a factory reset but my android phone is still getting hot.

 

[chanchan05]

When is it getting hot? And how hot? Playing games on a phone will heat it up.

 

[crammpa]

I don't play games on my phone. At first I thought it was just getting hot when charging, but then I noticed it was staying hot when unplugged for awhile. That's when I did the factory reset, the phone was over due for one and I couldn't seem to find the rogue app causing the problem. The reset didn't fix the problem because the phone still gets hot. Not really hot but it's uncomfortable to have in my pocket or against my face. I don't think the battery is the problem because the heat seems to generate from the above the battery compartment.

 

[chanchan05]

What phone? How old is it? How's the signal? If it's getting hot without use even after a factory reset it looks like hardware related.

 

[crammpa]

The phone is a Samsung Galaxy Alpha running 5.0.2 (Lollipop). The phone came out in the fall of 2014. I live in an area with bad reception so I always fluctuate between 1 and 3 bars. I was hoping it wasn't, but It looks like it's going to be my battery. It's not the stock battery, the original was 1860mah and this one is 3500 mah.

 

[B. Diddy]

Bad signal is a common cause for overheating and battery drain. When your signal is bad, the phone has to work harder to maintain it. I don't think it'll matter if you get a new battery. See if your carrier provides a signal booster, or consider switching carriers.

 

[crammpa]

I did that *#*#4636#*#* and switch my data to "WCDMA ONLY" so it's not constantly looking for an LTE signal that it will never find. I also did another factory reset but this time I did it from recovery and that seem to fix the heating problem. I always thought that doing a factory reset from recovery was more effective then doing it from in the OS via Backup & Reset.

 

[B. Diddy]

Changing to WCDMA only won't matter if your overall signal is poor. You can get an idea of the cell signal strength by installing GSam Battery Monitor (if your phone doesn't give that kind of info--I think Samsung usually doesn't have that information in the stock battery graph).

 

[crammpa]

It seems like my phone only gets warmer when I'm not charging the battery. The battery charges fine and when off the charger the battery seems to be working like it should, but gets warmer as its depleting.

 

[belodion]

It may be worth having that battery checked.
I don't know whether a bad battery could cause processor overheating, or a faulty processor cause battery heat, but one or other may be the cause of the trouble.

 

[crammpa]

It's common sense that an app is the main reason for a phone over heating. I couldn't think of any app on my phone that would cause that issue so I ruled it out. I was blaming the source to be a bad battery, a bad file I couldn't find, or a bad processor. It was driving me crazy because my phone never got so hot that it was concerning. Then I realized this all started around the time I downloaded Greenify. It was my first time using Greenify on this phone, but it never gave me problems on my other phones. Just to rule it out that Greenify was causing the problem I deleted it. Unfortunately for Greenify I have not experienced high levels of heat since I deleted the app, and that was days ago.

 

[crammpa]

That's new and very disconcerting

 

[belodion]

That's new and very disconcerting

Did you charge to 100%?

 

[crammpa]

Yes. That picture was just after I unplugged from a 100% charge. I'm plugged in as I type this.