Autopsy of Pixel 6 Pro shows impact of overheating Tensor chip after a 10-minute phone call
One of the issues that has popped up with the Google Tensor chipset is the component's propensity to overheat. That might not be a surprise since the chip is based on Samsung's thermally challenged Exynos chipsets. This problem was never made more easily apparent than when looking at a photo of a Pixel 6 Pro that has been opened up to reveal a charred rectangular-shaped area of the inside of the phone which is where the heatsink was. This component draws in heat generated by the phone and disperses it.
As you can see from the photo posted on Reddit by member zybernau (via Wccftech), the heatsink absorbed plenty of heat which most likely was created by the Tensor chip, the first version of the application processor (AP). It shouldn't come as a surprise that the reason the phone had an autopsy was that it stopped working after two years because of heat damage. The reason for this heat damage is surprising, however. The owner of the phone said that the Pixel 6 Pro overheated and died after he made a 10-minute phone call.
Arrow points to the burnt heatsink in a Pixel 6 Pro that died from overheating after a 10-minute phone call
The third-generation Tensor chip in the latest Pixel 8 series is also prone to overheating. A 3DMark Wife Life stress test showed that the Tensor G3 greatly throttles performance at times in order to deal with overheating. And since Google probably won't have a fully customized Tensor chip until the G5 in 2025, fears of overheating might continue to accompany the Tensor chipset and the Pixel itself through next year's Pixel 9 phones.
The Tensor G5 will not only be customized by Google, but it will be manufactured by TSMC using its 3nm process node which means that it will be a more powerful and energy-efficient chipset. These are improvements that Pixel users, especially those who use a Pixel 6 or later model, would love to see along with a application processor less likely to overheat a phone and leave it permanently damaged after a 10-minute phone call.
If your phone starts to overheat, the best thing to do is to stop the activity that caused the phone to warm up, and turn the phone off until it cools down. Continued use of the phone while overheating can lead to the death of the device just like the Pixel 6 Pro in the picture, which is now nothing more than a paperweight.
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