About a month ago we reported that the Samsung Gear VR was facing some issues in the form of overheating. The reports claimed that after about 20 minutes of it being used, it became really hot which is a bit troubling as this is a device that is to be worn on your face, and the last thing we’re sure anyone needs is the possibility of their phones blowing up in their faces, right?
Well for those who are eyeing the Gear VR and are planning on getting it upon its release in December, you will be happy to know that Samsung has since addressed the issue of overheating. According to a report from Re/code, this is in response to developers who have complained about the device overheating, but according to Samsung, this was because they were using an older SDK.
That SDK had the habit of pushing the Galaxy Note 4 to its limits which in turn boosted the performance. However to address overheating, Samsung Dallas’ direct of software development Andrew Dickerson revealed that they had to tuned back the cores to more “reasonable levels”. This addressed the problem of overheating but at the same time, some performance was reportedly lost, although how big of an impact this had on apps and functionality remains to be seen.
That being said it was noted that Samsung had been instructing its staff to keep swapping out demo units of the Gear VR every 20 minutes or so during the Samsung Developer Conference and according to Oculus VR’s head of mobile Max Cohen, he told the MIT Review, “This isn’t a problem that’s going to go away in the near future, unfortunately. We’ll always have to manage heat; we won’t be able to fully solve it.”
Our electronic devices usually get hot after prolonged and intense use. Our smartphones do that, our tablets do that, but hopefully Oculus VR and Samsung are working on getting that heat level down to somewhat acceptable levels upon the device’s release.
Filed in . Read more about Gear VR, Samsung, Virtual Reality (VR) and Wearable Tech.