Reports began circulating on the web last week that the new Apple iPhone 3GS was overheating. The phone, released on June 19, would become warm during use-- in some cases allegedly too hot to handle-- and the screen would become discolored. Was there a design glitch in Apple's new roll-out?

After almost a week of silence, Apple has posted a warning on one of their support sites. And they blame... the weather.

From The Guardian:

Apple says in the support article that "if the interior temperature of the device exceeds normal operating temperatures, you may experience the following as it attempts to regulate its temperature: the device stops charging, display dims, and/or weak cellular signal".

In its message, Apple says that the iPhone has a safety feature which warns users that the device is becoming too hot. As well as leaving the handset in a car, it says that the phone may overheat when left in direct sunlight for prolonged periods, when GPS tracking is used in a car on a hot day or when its iPod function is used in direct sunlight.

If the warning appears, Apple says that users of the iPhone should turn the device off and allow it to cool before using it.

iPhone 3GS users on Mac forums complain, however, that the handset becomes hot when it is not being used in a car. In a posting on the macrumors.com forum, one user complained that using the new device's video recording feature had caused it to overheat while another complained that after carrying his phone in a backpack, it got so hot that the plastic case became distorted with tiny bumps.

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