My Android-based smartphone – a relatively new HTC Desire – seems to be dying. The problem started with occasional spontaneous reboots that occurred only rarely during normal use. In the beginning I managed to ignore the issue, but over time the frequency of random power cycles increased dramatically, leading up to a point where using the phone for CPU- or GPU-intensive tasks would cause it to reboot within a few minutes :/

As the reboots happen only when the phone is used for activities that are somewhat demanding (like browsing the web or recording a video) and the time between two random reboots is far shorter than the time it takes to cause the first of them, it seems very likely that this is a heat-related hardware issue.

I’ve recorded a short video in which I managed to reproduce the problem in just a few minutes of normal use. Just to make sure it is not caused by third-party software (which would be very odd, anyways), I’m performing a factory reset just at the beginning of the video:

Unfortunately, this seems to be a common problem affecting many of the Desires out there. A quick web search turned out quite a few forum threads that relate to the same issue. Looks like I’m going to have to send my phone in for repair. So, at least for the next few days, I’ll have to reduce my on-the-go activities to playing Snake II on my backup phone, a good old Nokia 2100.

Related links

I compiled a list of links that seem to cover the same problem I’m running into: