When the temperature drops enough, a cell phone thinks that its battery is empty - even if it’s fully recharged - and shuts down.Ī chemical reaction takes place inside the battery. They may not be equipped with high-end touch-screens, but they work! And it’s probably not a surprise: the coldest temperature in Finland peaks at -40 degrees almost every winter. In the end, the Finnish engineers did design the best mobile phones for sub-zero environments. Out of the 18 phones we tested, only two feature phones could survive until these temperatures: a very cheap Nokia C1-01 and a five-year-old Nokia E65, which was one of the devices chosen for comparison. But when the temperature dropped to -40 C / -40 F, none survived. But, perhaps surprisingly, some feature phones did work, even though their LCD displays showed serious slowness. None of the tested touchscreen smartphones could stand such extreme conditions. Even the most persistent one, Samsung Galaxy S II, shut down when we tried to use the phone. 35 degrees Celsius / -31 F proved to be the ultimate limit for smart phones. And until that point, there’s not even a sign of slowness in its display. Galaxy S II doesn’t shut down until it is -35 degrees outside.
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Even if Korean engineers don’t face such temperatures as often as their Finnish colleagues, they’ve managed to design a better phone for such conditions. Only one of the smart phones we tested kept running smoothly when the temperature reached -30 C / -22 F, and it was a Samsung. By this time most smart phones were completely useless.Īgainst all odds, South Korean Samsung smart phones outlasted Finnish Nokia’s touch-screen devices.
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Apart from slowness in the display, they showed no symptoms until the temperature dropped to -25 C / -13 F. Even if they managed to stay on, most died when put to actual use.įeature phones did better. The majority of smart phones couldn’t handle temperatures colder than -15 or -20 degrees Celsius / 5 F to -4 F. In addition to displays, the dropping temperature also affects the device’s connections. Related Story | Latest winter fashion: iPhone gloves Amoled displays proved to stand cold much better and kept on going. All phones with LCD displays experienced difficulties when the temperature dropped below this. The Apple device suddenly announced a dead battery and shut down. Lowering the temperature even further to -10 degrees Celsius / 14 F was more than the iPhone could handle. At -5 C/23 F, iPhone 4S and Nokia N9 started showing symptoms: the iPhone reported a sim card error and the N9 claimed its battery was nearly empty.
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From there, we kept lowering it by steps of five degrees Celsius (9 F) until even the most persistent devices gave up and stopped working.Īt 0 degrees Celsius / 32 F, it was business as usual. The initial temperature was set to 0 degrees Celsius (32 F). We picked up the 15 most-sold mobile phones in Finland and three others for comparison, and took them into the Technical Research Centre of Finland and their “Weather Room”, a specialized research lab where the temperature can be adjusted to a fraction of a degree.
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MikroPC (PCWorld Finland) decided to test if the manufacturers can back up their claims in real life. How does your smartphone stand up to cold temperatures? Click here for larger image.