Galaxy S5 Overheating Issue and Other Observations
The next email message from our reader confirms that the Galaxy S5 overheats after lollipop update and one of the causes could be the microSD card, although, our reader Sorin said the recent update also fixed an issue related to creating directories in the SD card as well as copying file into it.
I decided to include his email because he shared some of his observations with lollipop and I believe many of our readers also want to know if what they’re currently experiencing can be fixed or not.
Message: Hi, I have read your blog at Galaxy S5 Troubleshooting Part 32 and there was one person saying that he or she (Thanasi) solved the overheating problem simply by removing the SD card. I think we are on to something here. I have similar problems, and I also used an SD card that I bought from Frys for a vey good price ($29 for 64G). Before Lollipop I was disappointed because I couldn’t copy files and create directories to that SD card directly from the phone, but the new OS lifted that restriction, and probably created this huge problem with overheating.
When I read what Thanasi had to say and your response, I thought I will try that solution too. But how to move the SD card contents to the phone when maybe those folders were generated by other apps, and interference from me would probably mess the behavior of those applications? I went to the app manager, and one by one I looked at the details of each app I had installed. Most of the apps don’t use the external SD card to store data. There are a few that do, and Kindle and Flipoard are massively using the SD storage (more than 100M). I often use the Flipboard app to browse the news, and the performance of that app was deplorable lately. The screen of my phone was heating a lot to the point where the app wouldn’t react to touch screen gestures anymore. When I tried to share articles by mail, after pushing “send” the phone wouldn’t return to Flipboard, and the “sending…” message wouldn’t disappear, and the phone looked like frozen. Every time I had to power cycle the phone to get out of that situation. Every time it was burning hot in my hands.
I wrote to the Flipboard team, letting them know about this issue and asked them to verify this situation. Their cache size is set by default to 128M and also set on “external” storage. Of course I found a way to the settings of that app and changed the cache settings to 32M (minimum) and internal.
Possible data traffic from external storage to RAM and back, with high speed and volume will cause heating, especially in such tight enclosure as the cell phone. I have removed my SD card and will monitor the heating and battery consumption patterns to make sure that this is actually the problem. Access to SD storage should not be by default, but rather on demand, with the user intent or at least knowledge. This is probably where Lollipop missed the mark.
Another thing that I noticed, relative to the smart network switch is that with that switch disabled, and while connected to a wifi network, and with the wifi calling enabled, the Lollipop sometimes enables both radioes: the wifi and mobile network as well, showing both 4G and wifi icons in the status. The previous OS was turning off the 4G whenever the wifi was on. Also, when the wifi calling feature was enabled, the cell signal bars were grayed out in the previous OS, and now in Lollipop the cell connection is still active. For what purpose, I don’t know. But the thing is that the phone is with all radioes on now, and if the cell network is weak, it will probably search it like crazy and battery usage will be high. The only thing I was able to do was to turn off the cellular data usage from settings; manually (no such luck with the phone mobile network). There is no shortcut for turning off the 4G, you cannot place that yellow icon from settings into the quick settings menu, so it kind of sucks. And yes, the wifi scanning for networks over and over and over and over again is another of those “features” of the Lollipop (funny name, huh? destined for such great product…) no matter if you are already connected to a network with strong and stable signal. Why would they do that without giving the user an out? Beats me. Regards, Karan.