Which iPhones shut down in cold

iPhone 6s shuts down in the cold. What to do?

If iPhone 6s shuts down in the cold. it’s normal. The instruction to your smartphone says that it is guaranteed to work in temperatures from 0 to 35 degrees Celsius. Consequently, in freezing temperatures the device does not work normally, it is not designed for such temperatures. And so it is with any smartphone, except those specifically designed for harsh conditions.

Abnormal conditions are different. If the temperature is, say.Your phone will not turn off as soon as you take it out of your. but it will run out of power faster. The lower the temperature, the more likely it is that the iPhone 6s will shut down in the cold.

Why the phone runs out of power faster in the cold?

The reason for this. Lithium polymer battery. Polymer changes its properties at low temperatures: it quickly loses capacity and speeds up self-discharge. After some time in the cold (depending on the temperature) the battery no longer gives the necessary current to operate the smartphone. and the iPhone 6s shuts down.

I only have to take it out at home now? How to use iPhone 6s in the cold?

There are a few tips for using your phone in the cold so it does not hang up. Whenever possible, you should keep your smartphone warm: in the inside of your jacket or in the car.

You should use iPhone 6s in the cold only if you really need to. And it’s better. Not for long. Use a headset for calls. so you don’t have to take it out.

If you wear gloves, it will cool more slowly. They have long invented special gloves that respond to touch screens. It is also worth to put a case on your iPhone. Any layer of clothing will warm it up a bit.

To avoid being suddenly out of touch, charge your smartphone to 100% before going out. It will run out more quickly, but it will still have enough battery life to make all your important calls before you turn off your iPhone 6s.

What not to do

Never recharge your iPhone when it is cold, or it will begin to condense and eventually break down. Let it warm up to room temperature first, then charge it. Wrap it in a towel, plaid, or clothing to warm it up faster. Don’t put it on top of the battery, or, God forbid, in the oven! Just let it sit.

How iPhone malfunctions in the cold?

The main symptoms that accompany an iPhone in the cold are:

Why Does Cold Weather Kill Your Phone?

• The phone is not displaying the correct charge level.
• iPhone runs out quickly in the cold.
• iPhone shuts down or reboots.
• The iPhone touchscreen stops responding.
• Spontaneous loss of cellular signal.
• The overall slow operation of the device.

How can the cold affect the work of the gadget?

No matter how hard you try to click on this or that icon, there will be no effect. there is no reaction. And if you try to do it for too long, you can inadvertently even damage the screen, and then you just can’t do without expensive repairs.

Rapidly discharging the battery.

Most of them contain lithium and cadmium, and the threshold of normal reaction of these chemical elements is only at a certain plus, that is, in a word, if the temperature drops from the established positive temperatures, there will be no reaction between them, which means that the generation of electricity is simply impossible. And the very work of the battery will be in the mode of rapid discharge.

This is the reaction of the gadget to the lack of power. as already told, the composition of the battery stops chemical reaction, it does not have enough power to start normally and start the usual work. It is impossible to make any calls or send messages. for all this you just need enough energy, i.e. to charge the battery itself.

What to do if the iPhone in the cold glitches or shuts down?

Try to keep your iPhone close to your body. Wear it in an inside of a winter jacket, for example, where the temperature stays above zero.

Get a good and, most importantly, a thick enough carrying case for your iPhone. If the design of the case is well thought out, it will create a space where the device will be at a more favorable temperature for itself. By the way, now on the market there are special “winter clothes” for the iPhone. Cases and bags made of natural felt. Such things allow you to provide the temperature necessary for the correct operation of the device.

Try to take your phone outdoors as little as possible. If you need to make a call, go to a warmer place or use a headset.

If you still need to take out and use the phone on the street, we recommend wearing gloves. It will be comfortable for you (hands will not freeze), and for your device. At the moment, there are a lot of gloves that allow you to use the iPhone touch screen: there are simple fabric gloves, presentable leather gloves, and even gloves with built-in Bluetooth, microphone and speaker, which can be used as a wireless headset. You really will have a lot to choose from.

You can turn to folk methods. One such recommendation is to run several resource-intensive applications on the iPhone in the background, which will activate the CPU. The consequence of this will be the overall heating of the motherboard and the case, so that the device will not be able to freeze.

Apple says the ideal operating temperature for iPhones and iPads is between 16 and 22 °C. The frost affects the touch screen displays. When the device freezes, the screen starts to “slow down” noticeably. Only AMOLED displays are not in a strict dependence on external temperature.

The fact that your phone’s battery died and it just turned off. Accordingly, if you recharge the phone, it will turn on again. Of course, for the phone to turn off, it must be very cold, from.25 degrees.

Use a case

The solution to the problem of using the iPhone in the winter “with little blood”. putting the smartphone in a case. The case should not be special, with some kind of special protection against frost. Suitable any case that covers your smartphone from all sides. An excellent option is a carrying case, the inner side of which is covered with any soft material.

The ideal option is a battery case. Using a case with a built-in battery is a radical way to get rid of your iPhone’s fear of cold. Your smartphone will be permanently connected to a power source, which will cause heat and have no problem working at low temperatures. The downside of this method is the high cost of the battery case, but if in the winter, because of work or any other reason you can not do without a properly functioning smartphone, the accessory will be an excellent investment.

Important! Be warned that charging your iPhone in the cold is not recommended. Before you take your smartphone out of your jacket. for example, turn off the power! Otherwise you might damage the battery of your iPhone.

Which iPhones don’t turn off in freezing temperatures

No matter how new or expensive your iPhone is, it’s very likely to power down in freezing temperatures. As mentioned above, Apple states on its official website that the batteries of their smartphones can fail at high or low temperatures. This is also due to the fact that the brand is trying to make its phones as thin as possible.

Older iPhone models are less likely to shut down when cold

However, you may notice that not all iPhone models are thin. For example, today’s models 5, 5s and SE, which are roughly twice as thick as any other smartphone from the company, are still relevant. Consequently, the likelihood that they will shut down or start to slow down in the cold is much lower.

Battery problems in the cold and arbitrary iPhone shutdowns

Smartphone battery problems risk becoming one of the major failures in the mobile market in 2016. In the fall, Samsung had to stop production and recall all sold Galaxy Note 7s because of the threat of an explosion, and in early December, Apple confirmed battery problems with the iPhone 6s and launched a replacement program.

Batteries in a small batch of iPhone 6s manufactured between September and October 2015 were exposed to air for longer than necessary during production. Experts have found that this disruption in the technical process resulted in their early failure and spontaneous disconnection of the devices while in use. Apple offered owners of problematic smartphones to contact authorized service centers for battery replacement, and if the battery has already been replaced by the user at his own expense, he can count on reimbursement of expenses.

However, the iPhone 6s battery problem may be much more extensive than originally announced. Due to specific laws, for China, Apple has issued a separate, slightly more detailed announcement about the problems with batteries. It says that a special diagnostic tool will be added to the iOS operating system in one of the next updates, which will help the company’s specialists collect the necessary amount of information about battery problems. According to Apple, there is a chance to fix arbitrary mobile device shutdowns at the software level. Indirectly this confirms that we’re not talking about a “small batch of iPhone 6s” with defective batteries. The problem has a much larger scale.

From representatives of one of Moscow’s largest service centers specializing in Apple equipment, we were able to find out statistics on the repair of the most popular iPhone models. Apple customers come in for battery replacement about 100 times a month for iPhone 5 and 5s, and customers of iPhone 6 and 6s about 560 times a year for the same reason. On average, a large service center replaces 1-2 iPhone 6 and iPhone 6s batteries and 3-4 iPhone 5 and iPhone 5s batteries every day. Try to imagine the statistics on the scale of Moscow or the whole of Russia.

One of the most common reasons why iPhone owners come for help to service centers is the arbitrary shutdown of devices when the temperature drops below freezing. Almost every owner of an Apple smartphone got into a situation where in the cold season iPhone shuts down when the battery is 20-60% charged, and in order to restore performance, you have to connect it to a power source or warm it up for 10-15 minutes. The number of queries in search engines, articles on websites and forums on this topic exceeds all reasonable limits, and the most frustrating thing is that the iPhone is the only popular smartphone with this problem.

Apple considers it normal that mobile devices turn off randomly in the cold, and explains this by the peculiarities of battery operation in harsh climates. The range of ambient temperatures for the devices is from 0 to 35 °C, according to the company’s website. Operating an iOS device at very low temperatures that are outside the specified range can lead to temporary accelerated battery discharge, which can result in the device shutting down. Normal battery life will return to normal when the device is exposed to a warmer environment.

This explanation could have been satisfied and written off everything to the imperfection of smartphone batteries, if the problem also concerned mobile devices of other manufacturers. In this case, everyone would have long ago got used to carrying portable batteries to “wind up” disconnected smartphones, to limit the use of devices in the open air, or to buy special insulated cases. But unintentional disconnections are the bane only of Apple smartphones. The first mass complaints from users appeared in 2012 and concerned the iPhone 4 batteries, and with each new generation there were more and more reports of problems in the cold.

One of the most telling examples for me was in January 2016, when the organizers of a New Year’s Eve event arranged an outdoor quest. Since it was a mobile technology company, the tasks, clues, and correct answers had to be received from a smartphone. The guests were divided into several teams, but 10-15 minutes after the game began, the main characters in the game were the owners of smart phones running Android. Every single iPhone refused to work in the cold and shut down, and my iPhone 6s Plus was no exception.

Apple does a tremendous job, year after year, of improving its products, be they smartphones, tablets, laptops or other devices. Time after time the company manages to set customer satisfaction records, but the problem with the iPhone battery in the cold season has remained unsolved for an obscenely long time. Devices from other manufacturers that work in exactly the same subzero temperatures without any problems become a kind of example for iPhone owners who attribute sudden shutdowns of their devices to battery wear and tear, problems with the power controller or other causes and turn to service centers.

Part of the problem is exacerbated by the life cycle of the iPhone. Apple smartphones remain relevant longer than Android devices, but have very little battery capacity. Because of this, in the long-standing dispute between iOS and Android owners, the warring parties have swapped places, and the well-known Chinese proverb came into play: “If you sit long enough on the bank of the river, you can see the corpse of your enemy floating across it. iPhones have been and still are much more desirable than the average Android smartphone, they are used longer, and due to excellent optimization even very modest battery capacity surpasses the battery life of some competitors with much more powerful batteries. But all this fades into the background when in the cold you see the iPhone screen go out at the most inopportune moment and begin to enviously look at the guy with the cheap Android.

If in the first year of service problems with iPhone shutdowns arise precisely because of hypothermia, then later this is added to the natural wear and tear of the battery. After a year and a half or two years after purchase, the iPhone has no chance to work properly in the cold, and shutdowns can occur even at 5-10 degrees above zero and a cold wind. As a result, there is a situation that one major service center replaces about 700 iPhone batteries per year, while across the country this figure can reach tens of thousands. And to solve the problem you just need to give up on the thickness of the body and install a thicker battery, or “cheat” a little with the composition of the battery to change its qualitative parameters. After all, Apple specialists have been able to add some magic to the second generation MacBook with a 12-inch screen and increase battery life at the expense of improved chemistry, that is, without changing the size and capacity of the battery. So why not pull a similar stunt with freezing iPhone batteries?

Apple products are not designed for winter

The other day Jordan Sargent, a columnist for the popular American portal Gawker, came out with a similarly titled article. I won’t translate his text verbatim, but here are a few things. And I’ll share my experience, since the topic of Apple devices and winter (not California) is a pretty hot topic. At least for me and many people I know.

First, Sargent claims he can be uncomfortable touching a macbook. Because the laptop is all metal and awfully cold. For example, in the morning. Well, as you know, it’s really chilly in American homes in the winter, and it can get up to 15-16 degrees at night. Also, the author of the article says that he turns into ice when he touches his macbook, after he carries it outside in his backpack for 20 minutes in the cold season. Personally, I’m not too bothered by any of this (and it’s a feature of any metal laptop), but everyone is entitled to their opinion.

Sargent’s Apple Earpods have a nasty story with his headphones, too. they’re like two icicles in your ears in the winter, and the wires harden and get in the way. Well, and the iPhone, he said, passes out without warning at 30% battery capacity. Here about the iPhone. the most interesting thing.

Judging by my experience, my friends’ experience and reviews on the web, in freezing temperatures iPhones really quickly die. And it does not necessarily have to be frosty in.15-20 degrees or more. A strong wind is enough, which is known to give a much lower temperature “by feel”.

Immediately I make a clarification. I am talking about using the device on the street. Otherwise some people are starting to say. you just have a faulty phone, and my iPhone never shuts down in any frost. Mine also does not turn off if you keep it in a bag or and sometimes take it out to answer calls or check messages. But if you USE your phone, i.e. you surf the Internet, take pictures, read social networks, use the maps and navigator, it will “light up” only a few minutes to live in winter on the street. The device does not show instant discharge on the battery indicator, it just shuts down without warning. If you warm your device in an internal for a while, then the iPhone will turn on again and show the percentage of charge that was when it was turned off.

Much depends on the current battery level. If it is close to 100%, the iPhone will last longer (depends on the wind and temperature, about 20-40 minutes). If the charge is below 30-50%, your phone will probably die almost immediately. The handset turns off faster if you use the camera.

Of course, a lot depends on the age of the device and the condition of the battery as well. When I had a year and a half old 5S, it turned off almost immediately, even in.1-2 °C in a strong wind. I carried an external battery with me, but it didn’t save either. It helped to “start” (turn on), but then the phone would shut down again.

The sixth iPhone I bought in summer, so I could not immediately test its “cold resistance”. And here’s a check from December. Again, wind and temperatures below are critical for it.4-5 degrees. It lasts longer than the old 5S, but it still crashes. The other day my friend bought herself a brand new 6S. according to her feedback, it does not live more than half an hour in freezing temperatures, either.

For the experiment I even ordered a fur cover for my iPhone from AliExpress, but it does not significantly extend the life of the phone in freezing temperatures.

I think the reasons for this “behavior” of the iPhone in winter are clear. The devices are very thin, in a completely metal case, and their battery capacity is low (instead of optimized power consumption). When you use the phone outside in winter, you feel how it almost instantly turns into an iceberg. Especially if the phone without a case/case. Many people, by the way, do not take out the phone on the street also because their hands freeze faster than the iPhone. I’m resistant in this regard using touch screen gloves.

It is worth noting that the rapid loss of capacity in the cold. a feature of all batteries, of course. However, it seems that iPhones experience problems more often. Maybe because they themselves are not very hot and because they are “very metallic”. Or maybe there are some software settings, which give the phone the command to shut down at a certain cooling of the “insides. At least I tested in the cold phones of friends (Xiaomi Mi4 and Samsung Note 4). I myself froze, and they did not pass out. In the case of Xiaomi I have an assumption. it’s difficult to overcool it, as it itself is hot, noticeably warm even in normal use (like watching videos on youtube).

Well, finally back to the article from Gawker. The author cites material from the section on Apple’s website “Improving battery life and uptime”. It follows that the ideal operating temperature for “Apple” devices is 16 to 22 ° C. Anything below 0 degrees is “too cold” for the iPhone. In the conditions of most regions of Russia, the poor phone has at least 4 months of uncomfortable (or rather. dangerous and terrible) street temperature.

Perhaps you can’t see it from Cupertino, Jordan Sargent concludes. After all, even in winter the temperature there doesn’t drop below 4-7 degrees. Apple employees are always warm, and they’ve hardly ever had to deal with unexpected phone shutdowns from the cold.

“If Johnny Ive woke up in the morning and picked up his iPad and wrinkled his nose at the fact that it felt like a chicken carcass from the freezer, maybe the tablet would be made of a different material? Who knows,” the author concludes. And how do you rate the performance of your devices in the cold season?