Does Pokemon GO cause heating issues?

Despite being over eight years old pokemon GO remains one of the most popular games on the mobile market. With the player count growing every day, some potential users who are still undecided about installing the game may want to know more about the title. When reading through online discourse regarding the game, one complaint frequently appears.

A common issue many users have with the game is that it can cause the player's device to heat up after a while, which might negatively impact the latter's performance. Thankfully, there are ways to mitigate this risk, with many fixes found within the game's settings menu itself. Here is everything to know about how Pokemon GO can impact a user's device.

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Why Pokemon GO can cause overheating in mobile devices

Pokemon GO on its own can use a lot of a device's resources, which can be worsened by certain settings on the device itself (Image via Niantic)

Pokemon GO is a geocaching mobile game that requires more features than some other mobile games. Most notably, the user's location data is required to play the game, which means they will need to have GPS enabled at all times. With so many processes going on simultaneously, older devices get quite warm after extended play sessions.

In addition, the game also uses many visual effects and animated 3D models, which need a fair amount of processing power to render properly. Adding this to Pokemon GO's already long list of reasons for being power-hungry means that the game can be quite hard on many systems.

For this reason, the game typically receives updates where it stops supporting some devices depending on their operating systems. This is also done because older smart devices simply cannot keep up with Pokemon Go's evergrowing list of requirements as the game grows more detailed and graphically demanding.

Summer conditions can also become a considerable factor for this discussion. The temperature outside can greatly contribute to the internal temperature of your device, which will only worsen when playing Pokemon GO for long durations. With this in mind, players should keep their sessions brief when playing outside, for their device's sake.

Pokemon GO offers many in-app settings to help players preserve their device's battery life (Image via Niantic)

By tapping the Poke Ball icon on the bottom of the screen and selecting the "Settings" option on the top right of the screen, players can find a few tweakable features that can reduce the game's impact on the device.

In the "General" category of the settings menu, players can find the "Battery Saver" option. Turning this on will reduce the game's power consumption, as well as darken the game's screen when the device is not face-up.

Additionally, in the "Advanced Settings" menu, players can find the setting to reduce graphics. This will downgrade the overall visual quality of the game, greatly reducing the stress on the device. Enabling these features should save users some battery life, as well as help with the overheating issue the game can sometimes cause.

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