One UI is Destroying the Experience on My Galaxy A35 5G
Ever since a few recent updates, my Samsung Galaxy A35 5G (exact model SM-A356E) has been suffering from extreme and drastic overheating issues, freezing, and poor optimization. I'm not exactly sure which update triggered this, but I suspect it started around One UI 8.0, though I can't be absolutely certain.
The first issue is overheating during simple tasks. I've noticed that just opening any social media app, like TikTok or any other, makes the phone drastically hot, to the point where it gets uncomfortable to hold even with a case on. The same goes for any other app when I'm doing something, whether it's WhatsApp, web browsers, and don't even get me started on games. When I open any game, the phone quickly gets very hot and dims the screen brightness. I know games demand more from the device and some heating is normal, but the way it's happening right now is absurd. Within 5 minutes of playing any game, the phone is boiling, even on low or medium graphics. But the main issue isn't even that; it's the fact that it overheats with simple tasks. Even something as basic as restarting the phone makes it overheat somehow.
Now for the worst problem: the extremely excessive freezing and lagging when downloading any app from the Play Store, coupled with the overheating. Downloading any app or game from the Play Store has become a difficult task. It could be the smallest app possible, even just 10 MB. As soon as I tap the install button, the phone starts lagging heavily. I can't leave the Play Store or do anything else because the phone freezes up on everything while an app is downloading. Even just exiting the Play Store is hard because when I do the swipe gesture on the navigation bar, it keeps triggering "Circle to Search," as if a simple swipe to go to the home screen has turned into a long press. But that's still not the worst part. While any app is downloading, I can't perform any action without the phone lagging and heating up a lot. Typing becomes difficult. Scrolling the screen in any direction becomes difficult without lag. Because of this, I'm barely downloading any games or apps, nor updating my existing ones, because I can't do anything else on my phone while they are downloading or updating. And alongside these excessive freezes with whatever I do comes the overheating I mentioned in the first point.
Another issue is game optimization. If I download a light game, it can somewhat run it, but it soon overheats the phone and dims the brightness. Slightly heavier games, like Fortnite or even Roblox on max graphics, make the phone get very hot and start lagging with everything too. I recently had a terrible experience with Fortnite. Even after applying every possible optimization within the game and in the phone's settings, including developer options, I can't even run the game properly at 30 FPS. In a match of any mode, the phone gets super overheated and lags a lot, making it impossible to play. Even when adjusting the Game Booster settings for the game, it keeps lagging. But the worst part of all remains my experience downloading apps from the Play Store and the overheating with simple, everyday tasks on the phone.
I noticed that this only happens on my model, because I have other devices here at home, even lower-end ones compared to my Galaxy A35 5G, and when downloading apps from the Play Store or APKs, those devices don't show these freezing issues, and I can do any other task without lag. For example, when I download an app via APK on my A35, there is no lag or overheating. This only happens with the Play Store. This experience with overheating during simple tasks, downloading apps (no matter how small) from the Play Store, and this excessive lagging with anything I do on the system is bothering me and frustrating me a lot.
I bought this device exactly 1 year, 6 months, and 7 days ago, on November 11, 2024, and I never had this issue before. It was only after the most recent updates that I started facing these problems. This really ruins my experience using the phone and is extremely bothersome. I hope these bugs are fixed in the upcoming One UI 8.5, or that they release an exclusive update patch for my model to fix these urgent errors.