Strange thermal issue and 3G throttling on Galaxy Nexus

[Guest andyysplash]

I've had my Galaxy Nexus for 18 months or so, and considering it's second-hand and picked up from CeX in a C condition, it's doing pretty well. However, after installing CyanogenMod on it (an 'unofficial snapshot' of CM 11 as it seems they aren't ready to call any KitKat 'official' for GNexus), I've started noticing some issues after updates. Update M6 introduced an issue where the phone would randomly lockup and after a few seconds either go to the lockscreen and upon being unlocked display the app switcher, or would turn off. It often happened when I pulled down notifications after rotating the phone after watching videos.

 

Anyway, M7 didn't fix that. Instead the phone now overheats whenever 3G (or Wifi for extended periods of time) is used. Light usage will cause it got reach 45-50C and may cause the lockup issue, but Youtube and anything with video content will cause it to reach 55C+ and at that point it becomes impossible to hold. Now, I think that this is partly caused by the update and partly by the phone being old hardware in a not-so-great state.

 

I'm not bothered about the overheating thing too much; what bothers me is that there seems to be throttling when the thermal levels get too high. Now, this isn't in the way that the Nexus 4 and 5 throttle (CPU throttling), but it seems that when the phone gets hot it throttles the available bandwidth on 3G. Depending on where I stand in my house I can get from 1-2.5meg on 3G, but this will drop to 0.5 or even 0.1 when the phone gets hot, which happens when I watch videos.

 

This means that a video will start to load, and partway through the phone will overheat and the video will load really slowly, not even managing a change down to 240p or 144p. I'm wondering if anyone else has noticed this bandwidth throttling when the phone gets hot. It could just be my 3G radio gets too hot and has actually been damaged so that it struggles when the phone gets warm, but I'm not sure.

 

Sorry if it's a little wall-o-texty

[lani100]

Cyanogenmod is just full of bugs do a factory reset and install the latest stable and deal with it. All I can say or look for another rom.

[Levent]

its probably not an hardware issue ,your issue sound like a modem issue are you using latest available modem ?

[Askew]

I have a Gnex on stock 4.3 and the 3G radio gets hot when you stream stuff but it doesn't overheat.

 

I'd burn Cyanogen and put rooted stock 4.3 on it to enjoy stable trouble free useage like me.

[Guest andyysplash]

Yeah, I might just go back to stock now kitkat's out for and use the latest JB. I thought they had finally decided to give kitkat to the GNexus but apparently not. The main reason of this post was to find out if anyone else experienced the weird throttling issue I was on about.

 

 

its probably not an hardware issue ,your issue sound like a modem issue are you using latest available modem ?

 

Bit of a noob in terms of custom android stuff - how would I check?

[Aniallation]

I legitimately don't understand how people say that KitKat is better for lower-performance hardware then Jelly Bean. I just sold my Galaxy Nexus and the Stable CM10.2 ran circle around CM11 M3.

 

Best bet would be to run the stable CM10.2. The GNex is a good phone, but it wasn't made for kitkat, and let's keep it that way. Also, they do naturally get hot when even doing moderate tasks. It's what happens when you cram such power into such a thin phone back in the day. 

[Guest andyysplash]

I switched back to stock (and man am I missing little features like swipe on the right hand side of notifications for quicksettings rather than twofinger swipe, and the battery icon) and it doesn't overheat on webbrowsing on 3G, but I think that the CM snapshots have possibly damaged it as it still gets really hot after about 30 minutes of youtube. It used to get hot but not that hot. CPU will hit up to 65C which is 10C higher than when on CM, but it doesn't appear to throttle 3G as much.