As complaints about overheating in the Xperia Z3+ and Xperia Z4 increase, Sony finally acknowledges the issue after replying to a Dutch publication. The Japanese-based company stated that some apps cause its flagship smartphone additional unwanted heat that can be felt by the users through its glass panel at the back.
Sony believes that this is just normal and should not be a cause for concern. It promises to release a software update this summer to address the issue.
Performance tests conducted on the Xperia Z3+ in the Netherlands revealed the overheating issues, which are most prominent when the camera is used for recording HD videos. After a couple of minutes, a message appears to warn the user that the app will be closing because the temperature of the smartphone is too high. The Xperia Z3+ also overheats when watching HD videos on Netflix and while playing graphics-intensive games.
Some Japanese owners of the Xperia Z4 and other global users of Xperia Z3+ report that their units are heating up for no apparent reason. In such cases, Sony advises users to immediately bring their units to the nearest authorized service centers.
However, some retail shops and carriers in Japan have warned owners of other smartphones powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 of the same overheating issues, and these include Fujitsu Arrows NX and Sharp Aquos Zeta. While the software fix is not yet released, they recommend periodically turning off the phones, most especially during charging times.
Qualcomm claims that the revised version of its Snapdragon 810 SoC has better thermal regulation, but both Xperia Z3+ and Xperia Z4 are supposed to be powered by the same revised processor. Still, the units experience the same heating problems similar to the HTC One M9.
Fortunately for buyers of the One M9, the Taiwanese handset manufacturer fixed the issue by updating the pre-release software. It should be noted that the same software fix by Sony would most likely throttle the CPU and GPU clock speeds so they would not reach higher rates very often, which would indeed result in less overheating but also lead to a significant decrease in the smartphone's performance.
