Comments on: BlackBerry users around the world talk overheating UPDATED

By: James Schneider

James Schneider — Tue, 12 May 2009 02:03:48 +0000

I live In the USA and my blackberry bold has overheated and will not power up anymore. This is not just a Japan issue. It was charging on the 12 volt charger.

By: Ken Cox

Ken Cox — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 03:05:40 +0000

I just got my Blackberry Bold Friday evening 3-20-09. Now on 2-22-09 I am submitting this post. I had it plugged in to the vehicle charger using the navigation feature and it began overheating. It was actually getting too hot to hold. I unplugged it and turned off the navigation feature. After 45 minutes it had cooled down enough to make a call. During the call it began heating back up again and then it shut down completely. I removed the battery and let it cool down, after replacing the battery back into the phone the power indicator was at 1/4 power even though I had it charging. I gave up my 16 gig Iphone to my daughter and bought this portable heating device. Monday morning I will be returning the Black Berry to Best Buy. I thought I was buying a cell phone and not a portable heater.

By: Stewart

Stewart — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 04:37:43 +0000

PS…and I work for Rogers…indirectly…

By: Stewart

Stewart — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 04:35:58 +0000

Most likely related to the use of the charger on voltages/frequencies outside of North America – which is 120V 60 Hz – foreign countries are mostly 220/240V 50 Hz – thus the charger could be “over-charging” the battery…the persons to “blame” most likely is UL (Underwriters Lab in the USA) who would have done the safety testing on the RIM…or perhaps CSA in Canada…being an electrical safety engineer, that is my opinion…

By: Ste

Ste — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 11:17:49 +0000

I’m convinced this is an os problem. I’ve experienced the problem at various points in time. Only on certain versions of the os though

By: Art

Art — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 00:21:06 +0000

Bought a Blackberry Bold when they first came out from Rogers. It had the orginal OS 4.6.0.190 after 4 months i decided to update the the OS. After a failed attempt to update the OS. The next day at work the Bold started to overheat screen and keyboard. It drained my battery in 20 minutes. Battery was hot, screen and keyboard.
After that I contacted Rogers blackberry technical service and walked through all the steps but still the bold was heating up. So after all that they sent me a refurbished phone.
Lucky me!

By: Ste

Ste — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 08:52:24 +0000

This info about the charging cable is interesting. I use two different charging cables at different locations. One is the cabke that came with the bold and the other is from my 8800. I haven’t noticed a difference but certainly couldn’t say it wasn’t true. Has RIM reported anything like this?

By: kdgaughan

kdgaughan — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 22:50:54 +0000

Bold overheating related to the charging cable.
Charge the device on USB at the office and A/C home…
Upgraded my 8820 to Bold, continued to use same (old) A/C charging cable that I used for an 8700 and 8820. This cable is at home in a convenient place, on a table by the door. It never occurred to me to replace this cable since other BB’s charged w/ out issue. The first BOLD overheated,damaged, made warranty-return. Second BOLD (same old cable) had problems charging, and felt warmer than usual, similar behavior occurred on the USB/Office cable. Device heats up, and fails to charge 100%.

Switched to a newer A/C charging cable and problem resolved.

By: Matt

Matt — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 20:59:33 +0000

I just got off the phone with RIM, having suffered the same overheating / irreversible shutdown described on this thread and several others.
Having given the PIN of my BB Bold 9000 purchased 12 days ago I was put on hold several times, and the staff got increasingly edgy about the sales freeze in Japan and number of Bold phones that are reporting with this trouble. They admitted that tech support had nothing to offer, and I’d need to go back to the seller in France for a replacement. All well and good, but I’m one of those Blackberry poster children – forever traveling and relying on the BB to keep me connected. I’m in Latin America for another three months before getting back to Paris. I thought RIM was now big enough to cover int’l after sales from The White House to La Casa Rosa! Not cool (forgive the pun)

By: Hank Wu

Hank Wu — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 12:25:32 +0000

I bought my Bold in Oct of 2008 from TaiwanMobile in Taiwan, at times, the bold have difficulties getting 3G network and the phone starts to heat up and the battery drain very very fast.

By: Ste

Ste — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 10:08:10 +0000

P.S. I’m currently trying .241 as the .234 had the over-heating issue. OS before that had rubbish internet etc…

By: Ste

Ste — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 10:06:08 +0000

Well then I must vent my personal UK based frustration. I have had over-heating issues with my Bold on Orange UK on and off since I got it last September. Variations have depended on the OS I’ve been on but I can’t seem to find a good balance between over-heating and poor OS performance. Some OS are very slow and suffer constant timer on the screen and the browser took an AGE to load (crackberry.com being the worst taking upto 20 mins to load). Other OS result in incredible temperature from the battery. If my signal location utilities app is anything to go by my battery reaches temps of 50 degrees C!!!!
I know there have been long running issues with the Bold running on Orange UK which resulted in them pulling it from the shelves for a period of time. I have hear rumours that the reason for the poor OS performance is the fact that Orange install their own software on top of the blackberry OS to lock it to their network and this causes slow performance. Does anyone else know anything about this?

By: Roneel Prasad

Roneel Prasad — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 20:55:44 +0000

When i bought my bold sept 2008, it was originally with version 0.190, i also noticed heating problems from the back of my unit ….and i also noticed the dreaded hourglass always appearing almost every second …as soon as the newest OS came out which was .194 or .201 ( I cant remeber which one) i upgraded it and it was fine, currently im at OS .234 and havent had the heating problem since

Roneel
Vancouver Canada
Rogers

By: BEN

BEN — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 20:17:56 +0000

I bought 2 Bolds from AT&T when they came out, one (Mine) was simply sitting on the table (Not connected to the charger) while I was at the computer, when I picked it up it was VERY hot, I looked to see if anything was running or out of the odernary but all appeared normal, worried about the very high Temorature of the device I did a Battery Pull to stop whatever was happening, I replaced the bettery after about 1 minute and the phone cooled off and was fine for about 3 days, the second time the same thing happened the only diference this time is it was connected to the charger, A battery pull immediatly resolved both problems right away, other than those two instances my Bold has worked perfectly with good reception and excelent 3G recption in my Southern California High Desert Community, my daughters Bold has never had the overheating problem and works very well also.

By: Is There A More Widespread Issue With The BlackBerry Bold? « The IT Nerd

Is There A More Widespread Issue With The BlackBerry Bold? « The IT Nerd — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 16:44:14 +0000

[...] There A More Widespread Issue With The BlackBerry Bold? According to BlackBerry Cool there is. They wrote about DoCoMo pulling the Bold due to an overheating issue just like I did. However [...]