There is no law (in private flying) on what equipment is used – only what equipment has to be carried. A very old debate, done countless times 
Indeed; phones are much less likely to overheat. Not sure why. The shutdown is a deliberate operating system action, so maybe they set the max phone temp higher, because they tend to live in pockets and can thus get hotter.
Actually cold shutdown is also an issue. When skiing in say -20C I would find everything goes off except my Pentax K1 DSLR which just kept going. The phone (Samsung S10E and previous) would suddenly drop its battery level indication from 100% to 10% and then quickly die. I improved this a bit by putting it inside a ski sock… but it always died eventually; the only way to get it back was by connecting a charger power pack to it. A Canon G7X died a bit later. A DJI Osmo Pocket stabilised video camera would make it all the way down a 5-10min ski run, no more. So if your plane has been outside in -10C overnight then you can expect much of your IT gear to be dead when you get in.
the only way to get it back was by connecting a charger power pack to it.
There is an alternative: quick stop in apres ski bar for a glass of hot wine periodically during the day.
Oh I do that as well, except the hot wine
I think I found the cause of your iPad overheat problems @Peter… Easy, your brain has too much activity. Finding ideas for new threads, moderatoring your baby, taking care of the other one, working for dough in the gaps, distributing EuroGA leaflets, fly to ski or not, finding ideas for fly-outs or ins, etc, etc.
All this cerebral activity must elevate your cockpit temperature, this on top of having the iPad installed close to all these lamp driven avionics, and all this must produce the effects such as you describe 
Peter wrote:
Indeed; phones are much less likely to overheat. Not sure why.
Surface area to mass ratio. A phone can get rid of the same amount of thermal energy quicker than a much larger tablet. It’s also possibly how we mount these things: it’s a lot easier to mount a phone where the sun won’t directly shine on it than something large like a tablet. Also, tablets might have more powerful processors and their displays certainly draw more. Nearly every joule used by a computing device ends up as heat (apart from a trivial amount escaping as light) so the more power draw, the more heat.
Ipad 5 Mini. OAT was +8, cockpit about +22, a bit of sunlight. Ipad case temperature about +40C.
It did this a few times and finally did it commencing an instrument approach.
For all the debates we’ve had about overheating (“never happens to me”, etc) it happens on every flight on a warm day when there is a bit of sunlight. The only way it can be used is on a vertical-ish mount, preferably one with a fan in it.
This also impacts the use of Foreflight, which I have been trying to get to grips with for some months, with a bit of success but a lot of confusion. FF is not available for Android, and Android is the only way to get a tablet which doesn’t shut down.
Then, during taxi, this:
So for airport maps I am sticking with the Aera 660 which never fails, and runs the same thing (Garmin SafeTaxi). Sadly ST costs as much to update as the annual FF sub…
These tablets were designed for locating the nearest burger joint, or for using in a plane with little windows.
As a matter of interest was the iPad charging when it shut down?
I have used an iPad mini for GA for maybe 6 years, and have used (along with thousands of colleagues) an iPad, and more recently an iPad Pro for the last 8 years at work. In that time I have never had (nor seen) the work ones lock up due to temperature, and I think I have had it once on my iPad mini, when I accidentally left it on the glareshield on a hot day whilst I was getting fuel. Both devices are in Pivot cases which maybe have a little bit more room around them than a conventional case, but not by much and there is certainly no supplementary fan.
I know the problem is not unique to yourself, so obviously there is something that could be improved, but I don’t know why you and some others have the problem whilst others do not.
My understanding is that charging while flying makes the problem worse
I’ve been using iPad Mini 6 for some six months, previously I used iPad Mini 4 and prior to that iPad 2. Never had any problem with any of these devices.
