Why your phone gets hot and what games are doing about it

Everyone notices when a game turns their phone into a hand-warmer, but few of us know why. After testing dozens of titles I can tell you it's rarely the graphics alone. High frame rates, background network calls and unlocked refresh rates are usually the real culprits.

The biggest single fix is the frame rate cap. A game that pushes 120fps looks lovely for the two minutes before your battery starts sweating. Many titles now let you cap it at 30 or 60, and honestly you rarely miss the difference on a small screen.

Network chatter matters more than people think. Games that constantly ping a server, even single-player ones, keep your radio awake and that adds up fast. The best-behaved games in our tests batched their online activity or worked happily offline.

My practical advice: turn on any battery-saver mode the game offers, cap the frame rate, and drop the brightness a notch. You'll usually double your play time and barely notice the trade-offs.

And if a game runs hot no matter what you do, that's worth knowing before a long trip. We flag it in every review for exactly that reason.