Quote:
Originally Posted by Shopaholic
Be careful with silicone skins. I find they tend to make the various electronic items hot. It acts almost like a hotsuit of some sort and keeps the heat in. I found that with my iPods over the years & just stopped using them altogether. They got too hot. I went with cases that I could slip the device in and out of or decals.
I'm not an electronics specialist but I don't think having a hotter than normal piece of electronic equipment is a good thing.
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Heat makes electronics age faster. Without going into the technical details, the distance between the metal lines in modern IC:s is measured in nanometers, which makes electromigration a very real problem, and heat accelerates that process. Also, electrolytic capacitors are to be considered more or less perishable. Even though the SMD caps found in iPods and other stuff that's made to be tiny usually are better in this aspect, they still age, a process also accelerated by heat.
However, it's not really a problem. Even though your iPod runs a few degrees too hot due to that silicone case, and that takes a few years of its lifetime, it'll still survive far longer than you'll use it. I'd say 20 years is a reasonable expected lifetime for that kind of equipment used under ideal conditions. You'll probably either break it some other way, or replace it with something better in less than half that time.
So, in essence, you can keep using that silicone case without any worries
