Have you ever had the misfortune of a phone overheating due to a bad battery
an old processor, continuous gameplay that is heavy on resources, dropped it too many times and something is about to blow? So recently the battery in one of my old test phones, a Droid 3, went bad and I have to constantly plug this phone in to keep it charged. Since I don’t use this phone for anything other than testing apps I was hard pressed to drop $8 on a new battery knowing that I can probably get away with using this old battery for another year as long as I don’t mind keeping it on the charger like a heroin addict on methadone. The only issue that I was having now though is the phone battery overheating during charge times (I hope it doesn’t blow up, but this is a distinct possibility so disclaimer: don’t use bad batteries) getting so hot that it could probably leave a 2nd degree burn if applied for long enough.
Recycle, Reduce, Reuse kids!
One day, while scrapping a motherboard I pulled off a little heat sink and got a brilliant idea. Why not stick this little guy on the back of my phone? So I grabbed some thermal paste and voila!
Items Required:
- Phone
- Heat Sink
- Thermal Paste
- Razor Blade
- Plastic Phone Case
Used Motherboard Heatsink Attached to Smart Phone
I have noticed a significant increase in performance while plugged in indicating that this is indeed dissipating the heat as intended. I don’t have any high quality infrared thermometers so it’s hard to say exactly how much difference it makes, but if I had to guess I would estimate 20-30% more heat dissipation. I didn’t weigh the heatsink before I stuck it on there but this heatsink like most, is made from aluminum and the weight is pretty insignificant. For all you Android/iOS gamers out there who could use a boost in FPS due to your phone overheating, this is definitely something you might want to give a shot!
