4

I have a Galaxy S2 with ICS.

When I use it in my car, while it is charging from a car charger, I occasionally get this popup:
"Charging paused. Battery temperature too high"

Charging paused. Battery temperature too high

Also Waze is running while this happens.

  • Is there anything I can do to prevent this from happening?
  • Does this indicate that my car charger is defective?
Improve this question
3
  • The car chargers I use gives 1 A. What does your wall charger for that device specify as max Ampere?
    – ott--
    Commented Mar 10, 2013 at 18:55
  • The stats on my wall charger are 0.15A for input and 0.7A for output.
    – Joe
    Commented Mar 10, 2013 at 20:19
  • I wonder if you can measure the Ampere of your car charger. The Galaxy S2 may not be able to handle this.
    – ott--
    Commented Mar 10, 2013 at 21:36

3 Answers 3

Reset to default
6

Your charger is fine. Only your phone is running hot due to heavy usage.

Your phone has a few components that dissipate heat if heavily used:

  • The processor when used heavily by an app (yours has 2 cores)
  • The graphics chip when your app uses OpenGL (also for screen composition)
  • The display when lit (depending on the brightness)
  • The battery itself (when charged or discharged heavily)
  • The modem also needs rather much power for 3G/4G/LTE data transfers

If this all above leads to a high battery temperature a safety mechanism kicks in for security reasons (LiIon battery technology needs this supervision, you may have heard of burning or exploding consumer tech)

Reasons: It's mostly a mix of all things above. Maybe it's also a bad programmed app (requires too much computation, keeps CPU awake, etc.).

What you can do:

  • lower screen brightness
  • underclock your CPU via SetCPU
  • Is Force GPU rendering in the developer settings enabled? If so, disable.
  • Try another app or file a bug report for waze (maybe)
  • Does the app work also when the screen is off (I'm not sure what it does, maybe it has speech output that doesn't require you to look at the screen)
  • maybe it's due to your model (I heard the i9100G generates more heat)
  • Switch to 2G only in the mobile networks settings:
    Settings->Wireless&networks->more->Mobile networks->Use only 2G networks (saves battery)
Improve this answer
3
  • 3
    Also checking for other simultaneous activities (I currently can only think of e.g. a streaming music player running in the background) and disable them, if possible, might help. Highest consumers would be 3G/4G up/downloads, video recording/playing, very bright screen (combining all these with a charger attached would get the device really hot -- so if in winter you've got cold fingers... ;)
    – Izzy
    Commented Aug 4, 2012 at 17:58
  • 1
    Indeed Waze consumes battery heavily. I suppose I can try lowering my screen brightness. I don't have root access so I can't use SetCPU, but even if I did won't that hinder the app from working properly? I wouldn't like to use the app while the screen is off. I don't think my carrier supports 2G. Thanks for all the advice, I guess I just have to learn to live with this problem.
    – Joe
    Commented Aug 4, 2012 at 19:48
  • 1
    You could try some alternative like OsmAnd or ask waze' support for help: support (AT) waze.com
    – ce4
    Commented Aug 4, 2012 at 19:58
3

You might want to check the temperature of your phone when this happens. Touch the phone to feel whether there's any abnormal heat. Waze is a battery intensive application because it uses the GPS, radio, screen, and GPU, it is normal that the phone would warm up a little when running resource intensive apps but it should not be too hot to the touch.

You would also want to put the phone away from the car's heater on winter, and shade it from direct sun light and turn on the air conditioner when it's summer.

It's probably not the car charger, but not charging while using Waze may also help a little because charging causes the battery to warm up. This may not be practical though, since Waze uses lots of battery while running.

If there is an option in Waze to turn the screen off on long roads, then use that, the screen is also a major producer of heat.

Improve this answer
1
  • 1
    I don't think Wave has such an option. The device is under direct sun sometimes, but I don't see how I can change that because I have nowhere else to attach the dock but the windshield.
    – Joe
    Commented Aug 4, 2012 at 19:53
2

Your battery may be defective due to overheat. You may be charging the battery when it's not necessary (possibly full).

I have another phone which has this problem. I changed the battery, and that solved the problem. So, try to change your battery.

Improve this answer

Start asking to get answers

Find the answer to your question by asking.

Ask question

Explore related questions

See similar questions with these tags.