yashsingh1/xdaforums huggingface dataset:
[Nexus 4 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] estallings15:
I'm chatting with a good friend, who is a Computer Science major, about this issue. Here is what he said:

"If you're getting benchmark problems related to thermal distribution on a phone, its bad design.

Could be poor design. Arm socs are fanless, and depend on the throttles to keep from lighting on fire. But they're also very efficient and tend to not need them. Sounds like poor hardware design."

I commented that a kernel can cause overheating issues and that it's POSSIBLE a future update would help. He said:

" Then it was tested at a certain threshold, and the benchmarks are going beyond that. So its moot.

I just laugh at people who complain about hardware. The engineers designed it for a particular usage level. If you go beyond that, its no longer their fault if you break it or get lower performance."

Food for thought. I'm still happy about my ordering of one.
[Nexus 4 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] jb91:
So basically, the CPU that's built in is just for show, and users can never actually use the power, because then the device would overheat? That's brilliant. I'm gonna give this issue another 2 weeks, and if it hasn't been solved until then, i'm gonna get a Lumia 920. Definitely not gonna buy a defective piece of hardware.
[Nexus 4 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] estallings15:
Funny. He was trying to get me to get a Lumia 920.
[Nexus 4 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] Gluttony666:
Correct !

exactly....thermal throttling is a good thing. with this much heat generation in the core and so little space for heat convection, conduction is the only plausible method of heat transfer....and throttling does help the case by minimizing possibilities of thermal damage. threshold is a double edged sword unfortunately....the right value for threshold to elongate life time and performance may not be to everyone's liking :crying:
[Nexus 4 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] drew_grant:
I think this is something root access and a custom kernel can't fix. Unless this affects everyday use, this shouldn't be a huge deal for me.
[Nexus 4 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] Gluttony666:
Please Don't buy if you don't like :)

let's put it this way: suppose a weight lifter can lift 500 lbs at his best....and he can do it for long enough to lift a heavy guy (500 lbs) over his head and throw him 3 feet away.....does it mean that his muscles are for show only????

when the phones are designed, they are engineered to work at their peak long enough so that tough tasks are done. if you want raw power all the time, hack the phone and make it do that, no one shall stop you. but remember, nothing comes without a cost....

lumia 920 is undoubtedly an excellent piece of hardware, but a powerhouse like N4??? i doubt it.
[Nexus 4 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] qwahchees:
Well think of it this way. We need a full load on the CPU and GPU to cause it to thermal throttle. That's 4 cores @ 100% and the GPU going "Ahhh!!!!".

Now most games now adays will go from 40%~80% GPU, peaking 80 when it comes to really intensive scenes, but that won't happen too often. Games will probably use 50%-60% of the GPU in a stable sense. Now for CPU, probably around 40%-60%, since it's a Quad-Core A15 processor after-all (The Galaxy S3 US Edition, Dual Core A15, doesn't max out CPU even in intensive games). Now, that means throttling won't happen for today's games. And for the next 6 months, probably will never happen as well. Now, when it comes to next-gen games, it'll probably throttle (1 Year+). Now to cure this problem, up the threshold to 65C or 70C, under-volt the CPU extensively and we'll be fine for the future. Sure, it might cut the life-time of the device, but who uses a phone more than 3 years?

In short, unless you're a benchmark junkie, we'll be fine.
[Nexus 4 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] D3m0x:
Guys, why you get so confused??? He already told you, the desing its amazing, zero lag, screen responsity, battery may its not like S3 or other phone, but, If you step aside the brenchmark results and you see ANY VIDEO in youtube, this phone its really fast, have quick response, c'mon you already have saw what I mean. If the thermal config are set down that should have a reason, Remember that Galaxy Nexus get overheat so easily and if this confings are to prevent overheating, THANK YOU GOOGLE, THANK YOU LG. Because you surely know that the GN was a frying pan

I dont want to be like a fanboy, but we must be fair enough, this phone is damn great for his price, may if the N4 was made a little bit more expensive, we are in our law to claim about those little details.

But In my concern, I think the LG Galaxy Nexus 4 is a really exelent choise for an high-end smartphone.
[Nexus 4 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] AlwaysDroid:
Here's my 2 cent analogy. Hope you all can agree to some extent.

So here we go...

You just bought a Lamborghini! Its sleek, styling and at its core is a monstrous V-12 capable of pushing 550 horsepower. It stunning to say the least.

But later you find out, it has a rev limiter. It limits you to 120km/h (75mph).

You will never notice when on the highway or driving around the city, since you never (rarely) get up to those speeds. Is that okay?

But what's the point of having a monstrous V-12 with 550hp when you can't even take it to the track for a race day? After all, its a supercar!

But its still a Lamborghini at heart, and its sleek and looks great and sounds great. It accelerates fast due to the horse power, but tops out quickly.

Interesting how you can look at it.

Why have a quad core you can't harness? But if we can break free from that limiter (software update , modding etc) why not?
[Nexus 4 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] GR36:
What you've got to remember is a bench mark like GL runs the CPU and GPU at maximum and really gives it a work out over and over again.

You wouldnt do that in any usage
[Nexus 4 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] red12355:
GLBenchmark doesn't max the CPU. At all.
[Nexus 4 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] albundy2010:
Go read Brian from anandechs twitter feed. He was talking to supercurio tonight about throttling on the phones he reviewed,

Brian klug @nerdtalker
[Nexus 4 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] jb91:
nice analogy. still, what bothers me, is that the N4 seems to be the ONLY device with these problems. Every other phone on these benchmarks from anandtech seems to perform as expected for their respective hardware. My question is: Why is this?

The thing is, it IS more expensive than the normal play store price in my country.

Thanks for the tip. So he says:

But how come these problems apparently never show up in benchmarks? Why are they getting so much better results than the Nexus, and the N4 seems to be the only one that struggles?
[Nexus 4 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] Gluttony666:
I believe it's because of threshold.....previous nexus device(s) was/were frying pans, it would make sense if they did something to get rid of heat issue.

One thing needs clarification ... Threshold doesn't mean you can't harvest full speed of processor but it may just implicate that you may not force the phone to go long enough so that heat can accumulate to cause further damage
[Nexus 4 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] jb91:
I understand that, the only thing that bothers me is that other phones do not seem to have this problem - even though this Brian Klug says they do; but where's the evidence of that? If this was normal and every phone would do that, because it's just unavoidable, then i wouldn't mind. But as it looks right now, the only phone that actually needs to throttle down is the Nexus 4. There is no word anywhere on thermal throttling on any other device. Because it just should not be forced to throttle when used at the clock speed it was intended for, no matter how long the benchmark is running.
[Nexus 4 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] WallnutBoy:
Yeah, these guys seriously need to stop complaining as if this is a deal-breaker. You are *not* going to be causing thermal throttling unless you're using benchmarks. Are you going to be benchmarking your phone all day? No. You're going to be using it.

Every review has applauded the phone for it's speed. Quit your moaning.
[Nexus 4 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] jb91:
And you know this how?
[Nexus 4 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] Stefa.:
This is true!

But what will happen when the apps will be more demanding and, for example, a game will require all the potential of this device?

In this situation i think that we will stress the device such as with benchmarks. Don't you think so?
[Nexus 4 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] DocMon:
Didn't the user earlier in the thread get throttling on his very first benchmarking attempt?

That is something to be concerned about.
[Nexus 4 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] PoXFreak:
Look, its not LG's fault... its Google. They designed the device, they have ultimate control over what goes on within it.

If they put a thermal throttle in the bootloader, and it becomes an issue in the future, they "might" come out with an update to fix it, but I doubt it. Why build something that not only outlives its predecessors, but its future siblings as well?

Case in point: I have dropped my Infuse from multiple distances up to 5 feet at least a half dozen times on concrete, asphalt, tile, etc., yet all I have is case damage... not a crack/chip/blemish.

On the other hand, my girlfriend dropped her Nexus no more than 3 feet (if that) on to a tile floor and wham, a huge chip jumps off the screen and disappears, leaving me with no choice but to have the screen replaced.

Longevity is not designed into these devices...
[Nexus 4 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] albundy2010:
Brian said that he had to scrap a entire review for a device because it simply couldn't even complete their benchmark suite. It was the infuse if I recall correctly.

Don't got me wrong. I am not thrilled about a device that throttles. But this entire premise that the n4 is the only device that does it is rubbish.

As Brian points out. Other devices have done it. Done it far worse actually. But nobody seemed to care or even notice the other devices. Ones that even dim their screens and give you a warning etc
[Nexus 4 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] wurzelsepp3:
If they don't change anything the device will probably throttle in future high-end games, that being said even throttled it's still faster then any other Android phone (the Optimus G seems to suffer from the same problem) on the market right now ( and still twice as fast as the One X or the Galaxy S3.

And I'm sure Kernel developers will solve this problem anyway, undervolting of the CPU and GPU (if possible) will help allot,

raising the thermal throttle limit might also be a solution but the device will run hotter and the battery will drain faster so it is not necessarily a good one.
[Nexus 4 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] thebobp:
Or it could be overconservative software (setting the throttling temperature too low) which we can fix. Just gotta figure out which.
[Nexus 4 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] wurzelsepp3:
The thermal limit seems to be 60°C (measured in the SoC itself), the Galaxy S2 has a limit of 85°C for comparison and

the Galaxy S3 throttles at 80°C.

Brian from Anandtech has uploaded the thermal config file for the Nexus 4 to pastebin:

http://pastebin.com/ZFynx5um
[Nexus 4 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] lnfound:
Whether Google or LG "designed" everything is not certain. Likely they had similar levels of input, can't blame 1 without the other.

Regarding this phone durability..your going off anecdotal experience with one drop from your gf. There's weak spots in any phone, given a certain fall onto a surface you could make any screen crack. I'm sure there's plenty of people who wrecked their infuse but have a gnex or any other phone that has survived many falls.
[Nexus 4 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] espionage724:
Off-topic, but does a Nexus 4 really have the potential to beat a Nexus 10?
[Nexus 4 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] ferozfero:
well thats wonderfull news... this is just a software fix... any idea at which temperature the optimus g throttles??
[Nexus 4 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] espionage724:
It was already mentioned earlier, maybe in another thread, but here it is; when apps and games become more demanding, they will be able to stress the device as much as benchmarks and stress tests. Then what do you do?

Lets say GTA 3 gets an awesome update that uses 100% of the Nexus 4's CPU and GPU power. If it didn't throttle, and ran at normal speeds, the game would play as smooth as butter and would be an awesome experience. If it throttles lower then normal even the slightest bit, your now going to experience lower FPS (due to the game being designed to require the full processing power of a Snapdragon S4 Pro CPU + Adreno 320 specifically), and possibly even some hitching/stuttering. Depending on how aggressive the throttling is (I really have no idea), it may end up getting slower and slower depending on heat output, to the point where the game is either unplayably slow, or the device shuts off.

I'll use my GPU as a (slightly unrelated) example here too. At normal clock speeds, all is well. Overclocking it to as high as it can go results in high temperatures that cause the core clock speed to drop in order to "save its life" during stress tests. The games I might play though don't nearly stress the GPU though, but benefit from the higher clock speeds. So all may appear good and well for now, but if I decide to play a demanding game, that clock speed throttling can, and will make the experience... bad.

Simple point is, if the phone throttles now with benchmarks and stress tests, it can (and most likely will) be a major problem in the future. The main question is though, what can be done about it? Why is the throttling there and set at what it's set at? Is it to also preserve the life of other hardware inside the phone (maybe the LCD can't reach a certain temperature)? Maybe extra heat being generated has the chance to cause RF interference, idk... Undervolting might be a possibility, but all chips are different. Just how far can we undervolt, if at all (maybe Google/LG undervolted as far as possible already)? Sure lowering the clock speeds is also possible, but I don't think anyone here is paying for anything less then a 1.5GHz quad-core Snapdragon S4 Pro processor... why would you after all? Would be like me buying an AMD Radeon HD 7990 X2 GPU expecting to run it at the speeds and performance of my ATI Rage Pro 120 IGP (pre-1999 intergrated graphics chip btw).
[Nexus 4 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] qwahchees:
Okay, so we know it throttles, but we don't know why. Most phones can hit 80, or at least 70 without a problem.

Let's look at the Nexus 4's design and speculate. What is it that needs to stay below 60C to operate without damage? Is it the wireless charging magnet, or the battery?

We really need to look deep into the design to see if software can really unlock this without your phone exploding in your pocket.

I believe it has something to do with the Lithium Polymer Battery, that it doesn't have as high as a heat tolerance as Lithium Ion batteries. That's my take.
[Nexus 4 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] AngryRabidBadger:
This isn't going to trouble me at all, the phone won't ever be slow in normal or intensive use of regular apps - and I don't tend to play games on my phone.

I see you use an HTC Bravo also, are you getting the N4? Big upgrade!
[Nexus 4 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] jb91:
Anandtech or another review site should just check this. They should set the treshold to 80°C and check the benchmark performance then. I doubt there are a lot of people willing to do this with their own phone, because as you said, it is unknown if the phone can handle the heat / why the threshold is set to 60 at the moment.
[Nexus 4 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] wurzelsepp3:
Throttling most likely cuts the power consumption in half, so once throttled the device supposedly isn't getting any hotter.

It's there to pretect the hardware and it exists on any modern device, most other phones just have a higher threshold so it's not that obvious.

No one knows how far we can undervolt, it will differ from phone to phone, but remember the stock voltages have to be stable on the worst chips.

Most peaple are able to undervolt the dual core snapdragon S4 by about 100-150mV which is pretty good.

BTW: The Tegra 3 in my Nexus 7 reaches 70°C in Antutu, if every device had it's thermal limit at 60°C they would all throttle in benchmark scenarios.
[Nexus 4 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] AngryRabidBadger:
Phones have been using lipol batteries for years. Does the induction coil heat up during charging?
[Nexus 4 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] Richieboy67:
Of course they do...
[Nexus 4 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] qwahchees:
Not sure. We need someone to thoroughly test it.

We should petition :D
[Nexus 4 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] rbrucemtl:
Overheating enough to throttle speed... it's much slower then the optimus g and it's the same hardware.

---------- Post added at 09:45 AM ---------- Previous post was at 09:38 AM ----------

So do they throttle at 60C to prevent the screen glue from turning yellow? :silly:
[Nexus 4 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] ferozfero:
THIS TO BE HONEST IS A VERY POSSIBLE EXPLAINATION...my nexus s had the same problem but only at high enuf temperatures...maybe they learnt from that..
[Nexus 4 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] WallnutBoy:
Yep. My phone's 3.5mm jack is busted, as is the camera and earpiece. I cannot take photos, I cannot take calls without putting the phone out loudspeaker.

I tried to buy the Nexus 4 on Tuesday :( It's going to be a very meaty upgrade for me, and I can't wait.
[Nexus 4 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] Letitflow:
Is there nothing we can do to definitely find out why there is thermal throttling and with it much worse performance than the Optimus G? :(
[Nexus 4 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] jb91:
As i said, i would suggest just increasing the threshold from 60 to 80°C, but im not sure if anyone's willing to try that.
[Nexus 4 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] thebobp:
On the contrary, custom throttle thresholds will be one of the first changes by kernel devs (probably). Just gotta wait until they come out, then hopefully it doesn't melt on anyone.

60 is hella low. I bet they were just being conservative.
[Nexus 4 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] Judge584:
Hi guys,

If you willing to see Google paying attention to this problem then you really should complain here and nowhere else :

http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/list

Of course more people complaining = more attention.
[Nexus 4 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] mdkneox:
From an italian forum, telefonino.net (user carter07)

After reviewing the file config nexus 4 and G dell'optimus I came to the conclusion that the problem is not the thermal limit reached by the cpu / gpu which is assumed to be 60C, may mislead the fact that the file is wrote that the threshold is 60C but when it reaches this temperature the kernel does not perform any action and therefore does not lower the frequency, the only action that depends on the temperature of the soc is when the temperature reaches 120C, in this case immediately turns off the terminal to prevent damage.

The lowering of the operating frequency of the components takes place only and exclusively according to the battery temperature (sensor batt_therm), based on the temperature of the same system restricts the components that consume more (and therefore more stress to the battery thermally) or, cpu , gpu, lcd brightness and another value called 'battery' which I think is related to the voltage of the battery, in particular:

1) when it reaches 37 degrees you lower the cpu to 1.29 ghz (default 1.51 GHz) and the GPU at 325MHz (default 400mhz)

2) when you go over 39 degrees is lowered to 1.1 ghz cpu and gpu to 200 mhz

the latter case is what happens in many benchmarks Anandtech in which the graphical results are 55-60% of the max and those for calculating the cpu are approximately 70% of max in some bench.

The review Italian who spoke a maximum temperature of 40C phone has not thrown a random value but will have measured the temperature of the battery through some app, it actually corresponds precisely to the value found before or the value that the kernel does everything to maintain.

Instead, the config file dell'optimus G says:

1) when it reaches 43 degrees is lowered to 1.29 ghz cpu and gpu to 325MHz

2) when you go over 45 degrees is lowered to 1.1 ghz cpu and gpu to 200 mhz

then the limit values ​​for the optimus G 6C are higher, not a small thing.

I have no idea what value to reach the temperature of the battery cell as my other does not have the sensor, it would be interesting to see how the other cell galaxy nexus at which temperature reaches the battery to make a comparison.
[Nexus 4 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] newbieandroid:
There will eventually be a game that causes the Nexus 4 to throttle which will be a disappointment to many mobile gamers. I went out and picked up a Note 2 so far I'm loving it. If the Nexus 4 wasn't limited it would most likely bench around this speed.

http://androidandme.com/2012/11/smartphones-2/nexus-4-vs-htc-droid-dna-benchmark-showdown/
[Nexus 4 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] tclaw:
How much does note 2 cost. I'm happy with my 300 dollar phone I own outright. Go buy something else and be stuck on contract for 2 years or pay twice as much. Nexus 4 best phone for the value hands downs
[Nexus 4 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] jb91:
So basically, the only relevant temperature for this throttling is the battery temperature? And it starts to throttle at 43 degrees? Did i understand this correctly? And does anyone know if this temperature is low? Cause it seems low to me, but i have no idea about this.
[Nexus 4 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] Harry Pothead:
The battery temperature throttle threshold is 6°C lower that the threshold of the Optimus G, which has the same SOC and battery and is thus identical in terms of the relevant specs. It shouldn't be a problem to change those to the same values of the Optimus G in my opinion, but I'm not an expert...
[Nexus 4 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] newbieandroid:
Well if you look around you can get a used one cheap which still works perfectly for around 450-500 and your getting a 5.5" RGB pixel layout SAMOLED display along with Multi-Window with many other software advancements that are actually useful. I did not notice how much TouchWiz changed since the first Galaxy line.

I never said it was a bad phone but the system on chip is being wasted and not utilized properly. HTC could of used those to make more HTC J Butterflies or DNAs.

The display and build design of the phone are still top notch.

They should have had Samsung made the Nexus 4 with the Exynos 5250 which has the beast A15 chip along with the Mali T604 :victory:
[Nexus 4 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] jb91:
So is anyone willing to try and increase the threshold a little bit and then see how the phone performs in the benchmarks?
[Nexus 4 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] tclaw:
450-500 used vs 300-350 new yea a15 would been a beast almost got that and keep my lumina 900 but hate windows phone so n4 for me sold lumina 200 best 100 dollar phone i ever got.
[Nexus 4 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] Stefa.:
What you said it's for the "Optimus G", the "Nexus 4" starts to throttle 6°C "before" =)

---------- Post added at 11:39 PM ---------- Previous post was at 11:36 PM ----------

I agree with you, let's see if someone will try to change this values of the config files
[Nexus 4 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] jb91:
This throttle temperature seems so low. Also, 6°C difference seems like it's nothing at all. If the performance problems of the Nexus 4 can be solved so easily, i'll definitely buy it. But yea, someone who already owns the phone needs to try this and then benchmark it (a couple of benchmarks in a row), or we'll never know.
[Nexus 4 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] Todd:
If no one has done it before Monday when I get my N4 I will do it...