If a case has a sturdy or bulky design and uses materials like thick plastic or leather, the dense material could trap heat inside the phone, increasing its temperature during intense activities like gaming, video editing, or even charging. This may not seem like a big deal, but if it causes your battery to drain faster than usual, your phone’s power source could age prematurely because you’ll need to charge it more often. But for people who rarely use their phone for demanding tasks, the battery impact of a case will likely be minor.
Bulky cases could serve as insulation.
Anyone who uses their phone for strenuous tasks like graphics-intensive gaming or video editing will notice that their handset gets warmer, especially if they don’t use a case and handle the phone directly. Heat is generated when the phone’s CPU and GPU handle more resource-intensive tasks. Put on a durable or bulky phone case, or one made of dense material, and it could act as an insulator, reducing airflow and slowing the transfer of heat from the phone body to the outside environment. Cases that trap heat can increase the phone’s operating temperature, reducing processor efficiency and affecting battery performance.
As a result, the phone may consume more power to perform the same tasks, causing the lithium-ion battery to drain faster during that session. This means you’ll need to charge it more often, and since phone batteries have a limited lifespan, doing so more frequently will shorten their overall lifespan. Additionally, make sure you are not charging it incorrectly. As cooling becomes more difficult inside a bulky case, there may be additional heat buildup, but it’s not straightforward.
Built-in thermal protectors help your phone’s battery.
Mrwhosetheboss on YouTube tested different cases to see how they affected a phone’s temperature; the results included a few surprises. First, he discovered that applying a skin to the back of a phone caused more heat buildup than any of the cases he had tried. He attributed this to the skin being applied directly to the phone’s body, so heat did not escape easily. The bulky case he tried resulted in a lower temperature than the skin, as did a case that doubled as a full enclosure for the phone. Mrwhosetheboss noted that some bulky cases are designed with ventilation in mind, featuring vents and ridges to prevent them from hugging the phone and trapping heat inside.
With that in mind, the extent to which heat remains inside the phone seems to depend on the case’s specific design. A key point is that modern smartphones have built-in thermal protectors that are triggered when the device gets too hot. The protections involve making the phone automatically slow down the processor, or dim or turn off the screen, among other measures.
The protective measures are intended to prevent battery damage, but the downside is that phone operations may temporarily seem slow.
The bottom line is that a bulky case that hugs the back of the phone may cause it to heat up more quickly and drain faster, but the device’s thermal protections will kick in to prevent damage. So if you want to use a bulky case, consider choosing one that allows heat to dissipate. Additionally, be wary of skins, especially thicker ones, if you do demanding tasks like gaming and video editing.
