iPhone 7/Plus iphone 7+ getting burning hot

[sovre]

First let me say since I've had the iphone 7+ (2017)) it has occasionally gotten super hot to the touch - but it has never lasted and has never seemed to affect the performance of the phone.

Also, there are certain things, like downloading/updating apps from the appstore, that seem to make the phone heat up, but then afterwards it goes back to normal.

In the last week or so, though, I've noticed what seems a new phenomenon: the phone heats up very quickly with any kind of activity - so just using safari to do web browsing, after about 5-10 minutes the right side of the phone is burning hot. If I put it down it cools off, but as soon as I resume any kind of activity with it, it heats up quickly.

Then also the last few days I've had some strange problems which I think could be related to this: for awhile the audio on my phone became totally distorted; apps seem to be functioning slowly; mail loading more slowly, and sometimes there is a kind of "stuttering" delay effect when I try to do stuff on the phone.

I've basically turned off everything in settings that drains the battery at this point - not making a difference.

I have not actually received the "temperature warning" popup on the phone - so I guess that's good? But it's nevertheless getting hot enough it's interfering with my use of the phone.

Any ideas what might be going on? Also does anyone know what it is is located on the upper right side of the phone that makes that area get so hot?

Thanks for your feedback!

 

[now i see it]

My guess: iPhone 7 death throes

 

[sovre]

My guess: iPhone 7 death throes

Are you serious? Is this a known thing others have reported before the phone stopped working?

 

[now i see it]

All you can do at this point is choose the nuclear option: completely erase the phone and set up as new as a last futile attempt.
If you've got the time, try it. Just don't get your hopes too high.
If you do go down this road, don't install a bunch of apps at first. See if the problem returns running a virgin copy of iOS

 

[freakomac]

This happened on my 7+. My phone memory was full (32gb!) and tweaking the settings or rebooting didnt help. I have everything in the cloud, so there wasnt really anything to delete to make space. It would run hot, stutter, crash, have almost nothing in memory and reload. I even got a temperature warning once in the car on a hot day. It fixed itself in 2 days, cleared out its memory and suddenly I had 5 gb of space available. So if its a memory issue give it time, otherwise a restore might help.
Edit: I had similar problems (maybe not as much as earlier) when I updated to iOS 14. Again 2-3 days later it was fine. It seems to be able to figure it out just that it takes time.