I like my iPhones the way I like my marshmallows: golden brown

Devin Coldewey

Devin Coldewey is a Seattle-based writer and photographer. He has written for the TechCrunch network since 2007. Some posts he’d like you to read: The Dangers of Externalizing Knowledge | Generation i | Surveillant Society | Choose Two | Frame Wars | The User’s Manifesto | Our Great Sin His personal website is coldewey.cc. → Learn More

Friday, June 26th, 2009

iphone-3gs-surchauffe-brule
While a nice, toasted brown color signalizes a perfectly done marshmallow to yours truly, it’s a bit alarming when it’s streaked across the back of an iPhone 3GS. Now, we knew that the 3G could get pretty warm, and would even warn you when it was getting dangerous. But the 3GS appears to have a different strategy: let it get so hot that it burns the paint.

surchauffe-iphone-3gs-brule

There are two explanations for the above images:

A: The iPhone 3GS gets really damn hot.
B: The white color (I know, it’s not “paint”) used on the iPhone 3GS is different from the stuff used on the 3G and they didn’t test it thoroughly.

Actually, I think we can consider A to be given, so it’s really a matter of whether B is true or whether A is just more true than we hope.

The discoloration seems to be in the shape of the battery, so it looks like there’s a problem when power draw is too high for too long — and considering the 3GS has more RAM and a faster processor than the already-gets-hot 3G, that can’t be too hard to do. Luckily, Apple will almost certainly replace it if this happens.

Anybody else seen this? Check your phones…

[via Engadget and others]

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