[RL_Quine]

Note that “hot ear” can’t possibly be an effect of RF, more that you’ve just held something up to your ear.

Simple evaluation based on the size of the battery in a phone tells you that there can be no significant heating effect on anything, given that there’s no functional difference between a call and a phone just using data, this effect would be constant to everything around it. There’s simply not enough energy capacity in the battery for this to be true.

[gugagore]

I don't think the parent was suggesting that what makes your ear hot is RF.(of course it's conduction from a hot phon and lack of ventilation). They were suggesting, I think, that cancer can arise from having frequent hot ear, regardless of the heating mechanism.

[harryf]

Exactly what I was trying to say. Thanks for taking time to think about it

[ajkjk]

That can't be right. I frequently my feel my phone getting hot and often take it out of my pocket because the warm patch on my leg is uncomfortable.

[frickinLasers]

I think the above poster is not clearly differentiating between heating from RF radiation and heating from electrons colliding with silicon or battery components. Given that simple failure in communication, I'd like to see the calculations they performed to arrive at their conclusion.

[txcwpalpha]

Yea, I dunno what that guy is talking about. Batteries carry incredible amounts of energy, certainly enough to output significant amounts of heat. After all, there was that whole scandal where Samsung cell phone batteries were exploding into burning fireballs...

[noonespecial]

The potential energy of a battery carrying out the intended chemical reaction to generate electricity and the potential energy of lighting it on fire and burning that same battery in air are very different things.

Modern batteries are impressive compared to their predecessors but adding up the watt-hours in a battery and then calculating how much that would heat a bucket of water is a serious disappointment.

[txcwpalpha]

You're telling me that you've never held a phone on your hand and had it get hot? C'mon man. Every modern phone that I know of gets quite hot when doing something like streaming video or taking a voice call for an extended period of time. You can do a simple Google search and see that people quite often discuss how their phone gets uncomfortably hot during all kinds of normal activities.

Nobody said anything about heating a bucket of water. The discussion was about heating up someone's ear, which certainly happens.

[th0ma5]

This is due to the battery.

[jandrese]

It would be interesting to do a study comparing this effect with a group of people who wear large bulky headphones/ear protectors for hours a day.

[RL_Quine]

I think you’d struggle to find people who wear ear protection but aren’t exposed to, for example, other hazardous conditions on a mining or building site that are hard to control for.

[duck]

A lot of people that work in an open office wear them.

[SketchySeaBeast]

Yeah, the headphones go on when I get in and only come off if someone is standing there looking at me like they just asked a question.

[stochastic_monk]

Musicians. Drummers, guitarists, trumpeters.

[jandrese]

Maybe recording studio engineers?

[RL_Quine]

True.