And Now for Something Completely Different...

As some of you might have read, the iphone 3gs is said to have a serious heat problem. Since it has a very similar chipset as the n900, this got me thinking.

- On the one hand, apple hardware is more prone to overheating because their designers don't care about "form follows function", but instead value clean, closed surfaces and avoid venting holes etc.

- on the other hand, my samsung z500 umts cellphone can become quite warm when using 3g continuously.

- none of the internet tablets has had a cellphone modem, and the n900 has even less surface area to dispel heat, yet it has multiple transmitters integrated.

- BUT: nokia engineers usually know their stuff.


Could someone with a n900 prototype share some info on this, please?

iBomb

I don't think the N900 will have more heat problems than the N810. The N810 became warm but that was mostly due to wireless.

My experience is limited to just using it for roughly 25 minutes at Helsinki Flagship Store. Before me a guy used it for roughly the same time. We both were testing just about every feature, so it was under relatively heavy load. It didn't feel hot at all, but as I said that's just one experience after roughly 50 minutes use.

I just might be just pushing the little thing too hard but I did manage to get my N810 backplate discolored from the heat, so...

seeding a bittorrent over night with the n800 plugged in has the gift of heating the thing up. Also streaming video over wi-fi with the tablet plugged in is heating the little thing.

My e71 also gets hot if I stress it a lot (video streaming, etc.)

So, adding the extra circuitry, the bigger cpu and so on, I bet that cpu intensive tasks (but constant ones - like video) will heat the little bugger - at least the battery.

Wow!

I wouldn't worry about heat. I've been using the 3gs for more than 2 months and it's never been an issue. There's a known bug with 3gs that causes high battery drain and i think the heat issues are related to that bug, cause my battery drain is ok.

I wouldn't underestimate apple's engineering either, cause bad product = high return rate or class action lawsuit. And they do care so much about their monies to let things like that happen to their products

The CPU must be running with a high load for some time to generate heat. If that is the case, your battery gets depleted very quickly, and heat will be your smallest problem. I've experienced this with WinMo phones running hot and dying within hours.

"Happiness, is a warm phone....."
not the Beatles?