Today in Toronto, it was about -8˚C. A normal winter day. My cameras worked just fine outdoors. My flashes worked as normal. After less than an hour outside, I reached into an inside coat pocket to retrieve my cell phone and my iPhone 5 said:
Of course, it probably meant to say that it needed to warm up. The phone was completely useless. Thank goodness it wasn’t an emergency.
It turns out that an iPhone doesn’t like to work below 0˚C. Not even this will help.
I know that cold weather affects all batteries and can freeze LCDs. But I don’t recall having any previous cell phone freeze on me. My digital cameras have never failed even at -20˚C. The iPhone seems to be my only electronic device that fails when the temperature is less than ideal.
Perhaps today’s smartphones are wimps or maybe they’re just turning us into wimps.
Funny. I had the exact same problem today. And for me, it was a first as well. About -8 here too.