Being one of the many people with problems with MS Teams, I resorted to attending a webinar on my FP2. The webinar went well but by the end of 45 minutes my phone was almost too hot to touch and, since then, a number of operations have started to misbehave including some app settings and difficulty charging. Keep well clear of MS Teams!
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Any other video chat that lasts more than 45 minutes will overheat the FP2, too…
Have you rebooted since then? It might actually help.
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Deleting the Teams app and half a dozen reboots later a degree of normality has been restored - but I won’t make the mistake of using Teams on the phone again.
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Then just check out any other video conference app, you will run into the same trouble again. They all trigger possible overheating of the FP2 which has heat issues, especially on hot summer days…
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Never particularly noticed on Zoom, Facebook or WhatsApp calls - and never experienced the fallout WRT the effect on other apps and charging.
(Edit) Just had a poke around the apps and found that both WhatsApp and Zoom are only 88MB but when I uninstalled Teams it said it was 238MB.
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There are comparable devices on which Teams runs very stable, and causes no hardware faults, I have been using the app frequently. It might lead to a higher workload on a SoC, but it does not matter which apps trigger e.g. charging issues caused by overheating. The fact that it actually happens is a design issue of the FP2.
In other words: Teams is not the cause, it is just a trigger. The problem lies with the hardware. Sorry for not joining in the “Teams bashing”…
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I appreciate your cool head @DeepSea, however, the ultimate solution remains the same - don’t use MS Teams with an FP2.
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Weeeeeelllll …
When you get the same functionality from other apps, that do not cause trouble and the one app is stressing the hardware beyond normal?
One can well argue, that the hardware is to blame, but as it can be done with the same hardware, it can also be seen as a software case.
Apps will always become more demanding, adding quite a lot to the need for newer, more powerful hardware. Oftentimes for gimmicks, that are nice to have (or to look at), but that you don’t really need. Thus the ever more demanding software leads to increasing electronic waste.
In this case, I at least would call it a tie between hard- and software.
The app is to blame for causing overheating, since it is programmed in a way, that it makes the SoC “work overtime” compared to other apps.
And the hardware design seems to be to blame for causing further troubles when there is extreme overheating.
In the end @Cloggsy of course is totally right, that the best solution is to not use MS Teams on the FP2.
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What an unqualified statement that is. So many other devices have no overheating issues with Teams, and I know it very well from my colleagues, we use Teams once a week for team meetings. I am the only member of my team with a FP2 who runs into overheating problems the longer our conversations last. And it did not help to use another video chat app either…
Besides, there may be a lot of different apps running at the same time, considering that battery consumption may not be optimized. Even if the UX of an app is not displayed, it could still be running, similar to reports from users who just updated to A9, and have charging issues as well right after the update…
So, is it really the fault of a software vendor when the hardware is going to “melt”? And which app should be blamed, one or all of those running? This is not a software issue, and there are many other devices that are not exposed to overheating…
Well… partly, yes.
The FP2 has a six-year old design and hardware. No wonder some modern apps don’t work properly on it. You can then say it is the fault of the hardware (but then I wouldn’t necessarily say it is a design issue, just that the phone is old).
The app could have been coded in a way, that it doesn’t ask so much to the poor old SD 801 that it brings the phone to overheating, since other apps do manage. You can then say it is the fault of the software.
It depends on the point of view.
Sure, but how old are they and what hardware to they have?
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The SD 801 itself has a lot of heat issues, and remember: How many apps may a FP2 run in total? Would you like to introduce a certain number of apps allowed to run at the same time? An app may cause heat, heat leads to lags in UX, whatsoever. But when something overheats, it always is a hardware problem…
Why does the SoC feature a temperature sensor? Because the (Fairphone) engineers can develop mechanisms to even try to prevent overheating. I know not a single video chat app that reads SoC temperature values and takes precautions to not overheat the SoC. There is no “old” or “modern” code in this regard, because otherwise your reasoning would mean that the “modern” A9 code did not match the “old” FP2 hardware anymore…
We do not have the very latest equipment, the phones may be three to four years old…
So what?
There were phones 3 to 4 years ago, that featured more powerful hardware / SoCs than the FP3 one and a half years ago.
Of course those phones you are talking about might not have that kind of powerful hardware. But that statement in itself is meaningless.
And you do know how, that they didn’t.
True, you do give lots of good examples and construct situations, where the hardware is to blame. Still that does not rule out other explanations, where the software has it’s share - at least in combination with older hardware.
But it seems, that you are not really willing to accept such explanation, as you have made up your mind already.
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The SD 632 featured by the FP3 is less powerful, thus developing less heat. In comparison and regard to the FP2, we know by now that the featured SD 801 develops far more heat, which is recognized by the SoC itself. So the next step it takes in order to lower the temperature is to slow down the system, causing annoying lags (delays) in responsiveness.
This article launched from Fairphone themselves confirms the overheating issue:
https://support.fairphone.com/hc/en-us/articles/213228026-My-Fairphone-2-gets-hot
As you may already know, the “brain” of your Fairphone 2 is the Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 processor. It sits right above the SIM card readers, besides the camera, which is where the heat you are noticing comes from. This processor model is known for getting warm when under load.
From the article:
Next to that, the frame and casing of the FP2 are made out of plastic, which does not disperse heat as well as metal.
The combination of these two design choices makes the temperature of the device more noticeable for you. This is nothing you should worry about unless your device reboots unexpectedly. If that is the case, let us know.
Why do Fairphone write “unless your device reboots unexpectedly”? Because they know that this happens when the hardware gets too hot. And there is the problem: The device must not get that hot that the only way out is to reboot the system. Again: Overheating is the result of bad hardware design, especially when either no or insufficient precautions have been taken.
Now, what does your reasoning mean to app (software) developers? They would have to consider overheating on various devices when writing software, too. The code would have to be tested on each device to be “overheating-proof”. Basically, they would have to do job which the device manufacturer did not. That is pure nonsense, temperature management must be done by the hardware itself in order not to crash and maybe permanently damage hardware components such as the SoC or the mainboard…
In almost 30 years I have never experienced a move of temperature control from hardware to software. We have had an issue with a PC system recently where it just shut down all of a sudden, not caused by a malfunctioning OS. It turned out that the fan as well as the heatsink had lots of dust, so it was the hardware that recognized the overheating, and the system shutdown was like somebody pulled the plug, which is pretty uncomfortable for an OS using NTFS data partitions like Windows. Also I experienced issues from time to time with “vaporized” thermal paste between the CPU and the heatsink, although such cases have become quite rare…
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Okay, you have made a good point about this. Though I am not learning the FP2 has hardware design issues.
Not necessarily overheating specifically, but they could take into account low-end devices, as some apps do. Some apps work quite okay on the FP2 and don’t demand too many resources. If in this case Teams makes the phone overheat while some apps less, the app could have been designed better.
I reduced the processor activity on my FP2, and it never overheats. But yes, some apps take more time than others to start, while having similar functions. So yes, they could have been designed to ask for more edit: I meant “less” resources.
I don’t necessarily want to decide whose fault it is.
I never said or expressed that. You totally miss my point, that @Alex.A expressed as well.
But I will no longer try to argue, as it seems I don’t get the right wording for what I want to say.
An app developer might be able to measure the impact of software to a SoC by simulation utilities, but not to a device, and there so many out there featuring the same SoC the FP2 has built in.
Ah, there we go! (Like Steve Jobs once said: “There’s an app for it!”)
Of course it is worthwhile to reduce allocations of resources in any way, and I am sure that Microsoft apps are allocating more than most other apps do. Metal is a heat conductor, and the thermal issue would have been so much better if the FP2 had a metal body instead of the plastic back covers…
What I meant to say is that by reducing the processor activity, some apps take more time than others to start, meaning they require more resources. I did not mean this a solution.
I believe we are going off-topic here.
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The performance of a SoC is a resource, too…
Wow!
Erm…just to be clear…
Don’t use MS Teams with an FP2…
…correct?
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