Apple phones have always been performance competitive with Android phones for quite a few years now, despite using cooling systems that maintain significantly l

Apple phones have always been performance competitive with Android phones for quite a few years now, despite using cooling systems that maintain significantly lower wattage. This means that Apple's processors are more efficient than the equivalent Android devices, but their cooling systems are very much critically designed. Rather than decrease the CPU performance, they typically start dimming the screen first. This is extremely frustrating when outside and you need to see something in the sun, if the sun happens to warm up the screen. This is widely regarded as the biggest problem with Apple phones and thermal management. One user on YT who works on commercial HVAC on a roof in AZ, US mentions that Apple phones are unusable because the ambient temperature and sun will cause the phone to shut down and display a overtemp warning without doing anything, while Samsung keeps working. The reason flagship Android devices do not have this problem is twofold: 1) Android device makers use a ton more cooling materials. Large area graphite film layered with a competition driven (among all Chinese manufacturers anyway) almost 70% coverage vapor chamber cooler. Only Samsung lags the industry here. 2) Different trade offs. Android phones typically allow surface temperatures up to 47C for high performance devices, where Apple probably believes users will complain of overheating if the device feels hot, thus targeting 44C. This is the back surface temp, not the chip temp. The stacked main board approach means that on a iPhone Xs Max I jailbroke to look at the temp sensor on, the most average of tasks like scrolling would spike the temp over 80c. Furthermore, Android phones are capable of using the whole body to dissipate heat, but this will heat the battery and decrease its lifespan. Apple makes it clear in their design choices that they do not want this. I played with the Pro Max in an Apple Store a day ago and it was not hard to negate the whole 2000nits thing in less than 30 seconds dawdling about the phone without even using the browser or apps that the phone doesn't come with. The brightness (triggered with another phone flashlight over the sensor) lasted for not a very long time. Running WebGL Aquarium, which is the best approximation of a power wasting js/webgl application I could think of, the screen almost immediately dimmed another step. Running my finger over the surface of the phone with my finger to approximate a really terrible thermal image, it was clear that heat is not well spread to any region except the motherboard itself. By teardowns, there is a finger of graphite that avoids the battery and uses the top left of the screen. no heat felt there at all. Whatever gains the 14 has by way of the aluminum plane under the display, (which was actually a rather effective heat spreader per thermal image from Max Tech and Geekerwan on YT) the Pro misses out on, probably because stainless would not have helped nearly as much, and that device is "too" thick and heavy as it is. At least we know now that Apple are not entirely averse to heating up the battery a lil....