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iPhone 15: users of Pro and Pro Max models complain of overheating issues
- gniv 3y agoDiscussed a few hours ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37697382 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37697382
- ChrisArchitect 3y ago[dupe]
- fh9302 3y agoGSMArena bought two iPhone 15 Pro Max from different retailers to test the overheating issue and they were unable to replicate it. > Lastly, we did read reports of overheating iPhones, some during fast charging. For this review, we used two iPhone 15 Pro Max units, obtained from different retailers, and neither of those became unbearably hot even after an hour of GPU stress testing. Warm, rather unpleasantly (but not concerningly) - sure, but hot - never. We know people have experienced and documented such issues, but we haven't been able to replicate those so far on our units. They think it's a bug in iOS 17 that causes some phones to overheat. > And since we ran the same tests on the iPhone 14 Pro Max, which last year we crowned as a phone with excellent stability, we were surprised to see that now, under iOS 17, its stability has gotten worse. That's why we think there is some software issue at play in addition to/or just contributing to the poor heat dissipation. https://www.gsmarena.com/apple_iphone_15_pro_max-review-2618p5.php https://www.gsmarena.com/apple_iphone_15_pro_max-review-2618...
- dna_polymerase 3y ago> Warm, rather unpleasantly (but not concerningly) - sure, but hot - never. If only we had a standardized scale to measure and express warm vs. cold…
- naravara 3y agoThe problem is that the temperature you feel on your hand is not necessarily the temperature the chip is operating under. If your hand is warm that, ironically, means the heat is dissipating effectively. If it's not dissipating, then your hand will remain cool because all the heat is still on the chip. So unless Apple gives you a way to read the chip's own temperature sensor data, what you feel holding it isn't that useful. (From a performance standpoint at least. Having a handwarmer when you didn't want a handwarmer is a different kind of problem.)
- delta_p_delta_x 3y agoTo echo the parent commenter: If only things at a non-zero thermodynamic temperature gave off some sort of invisible wave that could be detected at a distance by some calibrated sensor that would give an absolute measure of the hotness of said things, without needing to worry about relative temperature differences...
- bogantech 3y agoNormies care about the fact that it's uncomfortably warm to hold, not whether the CPU is hot or not.
- jncfhnb 3y agoThey do Until they don’t
- capableweb 3y agoI do think "normies" care about the CPU is hot or not, but they do so indirectly, as the phone will start throttling the CPU when it reaches a certain temperature, so the phone will start feeling laggy. If you've ever tried to play a game on the iPhone/doing something else CPU/GPU heavy while outside in the sun on a hot day, you'll know what I mean, the performance is much worse.
- lloeki 3y ago
- sangnoir 3y ago> GSMArena bought two iPhone 15 Pro Max from different retailers to test the overheating issue and they were unable to replicate it. Did anyone manage to "replicate" the explosion of a Galaxy Note 7 under controlled usage? Assuming no one did, what conclusion wiuld we draw from s failure to replicate on n=2?
- nfriedly 3y agoFailure to replicate doesn't mean that it's not an issue. They even acknowledged that it has happened to other people. It's just another data point. IMO, it sounds like it's a real issue, but not one that affects the majority of users.
- nailer 3y agoThe way you handle inconsistent failures IRL is the same way you handle it in software: Run a hundred instances of the test. Measure the failure rate. Make the change. Re-measure. In bash it might be a for loop running the test a hundred times, in person it might getting a hundred phones.
- KolenCh 3y agoIf you have an overheated phone as a rare event then you will at worst wasted a few hours of your life, if you have an exploding phone as a rare event then you will have your remaining of your life wasted.
- elinear 3y agoMKBHD in his review mentioned a very odd instance of overheating, seemingly random and unrelated to any stressful workload. Anecdotal evidence points to iOS bugs. https://youtu.be/cBpGq-vDr2Y?si=B0Tv1iRcd6Iran6B&t=669 https://youtu.be/cBpGq-vDr2Y?si=B0Tv1iRcd6Iran6B&t=669
- instagib 3y agoThere’s a couple clarifications I’d like. Case or no case? A case keeps the heat in more. Max settings on games with no fps cap? Optimized charging off? Limit frame rate off? Brightness level max? Auto brightness off? Background processes on? Notifications on? Reduce motion off? Location services on / precise? Wi-Fi/bluetooth/air drop on? Standard set of social apps installed with games logged in, apps in the app switcher not closed, and email accounts set for push notifications? I have personally observed my [phone/ipad/old iPhone/old iPad] getting so hot that I got the cannot charge due to temperature message. Updates could have changed as I could not play some of these games for very long and others may have similar complaints. I blanched my iPad case white in some areas due to heating and charging while playing. Here’s my stress testing list: “20 minutes till dawn” minutes “Monster hunter now” “Disney mirrorverse” “Dragon raja” “Genshin impact” “Pathless”
- ASalazarMX 3y agoI can easily overheat an iPhone 14 Pro Max by taking pictures for half an hour. Even opening the camera app and leaving it unlocked the same time is enough to greatly overheat it. I don't know why the camera app is so power hungry, but I've replicated it with different two phones of the same model belonging to different people. It's very annoying if your use your iPhone to take pictures while traveling, because it will be drained by the afternoon, and it's something that didn't happen until the late iOS 16 versions. I haven't tried it in iOS 17 yet.
- ProfessorLayton 3y agoI'm not sure if this is common knowledge, but the phone is essentially taking pictures the entire time the camera app is open. Pressing the shutter button is merely selecting which photo to keep, and adding more post processing. This is done to minimize lag, which is important when trying to capture a moment, but uses a lot of power. My main gripe with this approach has been that this causes the camera app to be incredibly RAM hungry, and my Safari tabs/Apps will reload when switching back to them. My 15 Pro seems a little better thanks to the increased memory, but the issue is still there. Additionally, it's been relatively recently since iPhone captured at resolutions higher than 12MP, so that could explain why this phenomenon has gotten worse recently.
- op00to 3y agoWhen I sue full 20W charging, my iPhone 14 Pro gets warm, surprisngly so. That's a lot of power going into a small space. My wife's does the same.
- Our_Benefactors 3y ago[flagged]
- fawnj 3y agoAlways the same every year. New iphone full of software and hardware issues, completely unusable according to the press. Keeps selling like hot pancakes, no one has any real problem with theirs (and if they do they get a replacement)
- NBJack 3y agoFWIW, this has been one of the worst seasons for mobile phone sales in a decade. [1] It may be telling if the latest from Apple will change that or not. [1] https://www.cnbc.com/2023/08/17/global-smartphone-market-to-hit-decade-low-apple-could-take-top-spot.html https://www.cnbc.com/2023/08/17/global-smartphone-market-to-...
- lotsofpulp 3y agoI expect mobile phone sales to continue to decrease due to market saturation and new phones not being sufficiently differentiable to old phones, so phone longevity increases too.
- WirelessGigabit 3y agoIn reality the only upgrade from the 14 Pro Max to this one is 3x to 5x zoom and USB-C. And while I absolutely love USB-C, I do have a whole collection of lightning cables. Something in my way of using my iPhone(s) make pin 4 wear out insanely fast. Maybe it's because I carry it with me in the shower / hot tub. Not sure how the USB-C variant deals with the pitting. The button on the side and the titanium are a change, but not an upgrade. In fact, I would say the button is a downgrade from the old rocker. You could, in your pocket flip the rocker and know your phone was now on silent mode. Now you have to rely on vibration patterns.
- zamadatix 3y agoI'll never be able to view "can flip my locked phone to silent mode while it's in my pocket" as anything but a design flaw in the first place. IMO, the greatest improvement to this area is finally being able to disable that physical action in software.
- secretsatan 3y agoI have a 15 pro here for testing, it was fine yesterday, or maybe I just didn't notice it because i wasn't handling it so much, but today, it is very warm (After being idle for 30 mins, not plugged in or anything). Also, the framerate on our AR app is worse, XCode debugging navigator isn't telling me the fps, but compared to a 12 pro, it is noticeably jittery
- fh9302 3y agoAre you using the Instagram app? It is documented that a bug in the app in combination with iOS 17 causes phones to massively heat up while doing basically nothing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6X2ZIkYFsQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6X2ZIkYFsQ
- bayindirh 3y agoInstagram's app is buggy, yes. It visibly increases battery consumption sometimes even if it's at the background. I keep it killed because of it. (iPhone X, iOS 16.7)
- secretsatan 3y agoNo, it's clean out the box (apart from our own apps, but as I'm running through XCode,, I know the app was killed), I ran the system update and that's it
- nfriedly 3y agoI've had that experience with some of my testing devices. For the jailbroken one, I can SSH in and see what's happening, and I recall that in at least one case it was an apple process that was sitting at 100% (I think it was springboard, but it's been a while). I killed it and it restarted automatically at a more reasonable 0-3% CPU load. For the non-jailbroken devices, I just reboot them if I notice something is off.
- NBJack 3y agoThis sounds like it could be the real culprit: a random process soaking up CPU time unnecessarily (and indefinitely). Has happened on many a PC I've used, especially in a corporate environment where Monday becomes a flurry of background scripts and 'silent' updates that make me wonder why my fans kicked in browsing my email. Hopefully fixable with a patch.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- samcat116 3y agoHaven't had any issues with mine other than transfer day. Its hasn't been noticeably hot since.
- erwincoumans 3y agoBattery life is very disappointing indeed, even without overheating. Updating to latest iOS 17.1 Developer Beta seems to reduce the battery drain issue in my experience so far.
- haswell 3y agoI wonder how much of this is just caused by the higher workloads people put on their new phones just after purchase: restoring from backup, installing/trying new apps, testing out that new GPU, Photos doing a new classification pass on the existing library, and just a generally higher than average workload for the first few weeks of ownership. It seems like there are always a flurry of reports of issues like this on launch week, which then pretty much disappear a few weeks later.
- brookst 3y agoPossibly that, possibly that any headline about the new phones is guaranteed clicks. IIRC the original article about this cited case temperatures of 116f in some areas during intense benchmarking.
- oflannabhra 3y agoI think it is likely this is a major cause of the issues, or at the very least is influencing the prevalence of them.
- jeroenhd 3y agoAt least one post I found online talked about a direct corelation between talking over the phone and the temperature of the back rising to about 42℃. I think this is a software flaw as well, but it's also probably more than just "new phone, heavy workloads". I'm sure an update or two will fix the issues most people run into, these things tend to happen when phones hit the market.
- haswell 3y agoEven in this case, it could be that the background utilization from “new phone” tasks is responsible for a phone call crossing some threshold. Fresh bugs needing fresh patches seems pretty likely as well.
- londons_explore 3y agoI kinda wish Apple and Google would work on this first-run case. It's especially bad when you buy a new phone and set it up on-the-go, only to find the battery is dead before all the apps have even installed. Not a great experience. They could do all the app installs and setup on a virtualized iphone in the cloud, and then just copy over all the already-configured apps.
- A_D_E_P_T 3y agoI can't say to what extent this is a real problem, but I can note that titanium has exceptionally poor thermal conductivity. Ti 6-4: 6.7 W/(m·K) Stainless steel (18-8): ~16.5 W/(m·K) Aluminum 6061-T6: >150 W/(m·K) As engineering alloys go, in general, titanium is at the bottom of the pack for thermal conductivity. It's possible that this might make the body of the phone a poor heatsink and lead to localized hot spots. I'd think that the engineers at Apple have compensated for this, though. A thin internal copper or aluminum heatsink would be more than enough. But it's interesting that this titanium phone is experiencing thermal problems -- because that's the one problem you'd really expect to see with a titanium-bodied electronic device.
- scblock 3y agoThis is irrelevant since the majority of the internal frame is aluminum. It's really just the outer portion that you hold that is titanium.
- concinds 3y agoSince titanium covers the whole back and sides, wouldn't it act as a "thermal bottleneck" regardless of the aluminum?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- halostatue 3y agoTitanium is only the outer band. The back is glass.
- concinds 3y agoThanks, I wasn't aware of that.
- zitterbewegung 3y agoThe hottest I got my iPhone pro was charging it with the Camera app on (this would make any iPhone warm even my iPhone pro 24). I don’t think it’s a thermal conductivity I think it’s workloads.
- vehemenz 3y agoThe hottest my iPhone 13 Mini gets is charging with the Camera app on, too. I don't know if this phenomenon is unique to the newer phone.
- zitterbewegung 3y agoYea it isn’t the camera app when it isn’t in focus or laying down with the camera facing down seems to make it warm I think the autofocus is just looping.
- gjsman-1000 3y agoI'm not sure. I've been using an iPhone 15 Pro, without a case, for the last week. It gets a little warm when taking lots of photos, but even during setup, it was never "hot." I remember my iPhone SE 2020 getting hotter than this.
- sod 3y agoIf iOS wasn't just a baby OS but instead had an activity monitor, we wouldn't play scavenger hunt, but instead just see "oh, this app or process is pinned to 100% for 5 minutes, please fix the app or apple please throttle a simple picture viewing app like instagram before it turned my brick into a stovetop". I guess we have to wait until daddy apple with their full system access can reproduce it and fix in 17.1
- vlovich123 3y agoFirst of all, the phone does tell you which process is responsible for burning energy. It’s not necessarily the best but it’s there. If the phone is getting too hot to hold though, it’s not a software bug of something pinning the CPU. The OS should be thermal throttling well before that happens, and I’ve seen that happen on hot days (the phone goes from thermal throttling the CPU to a perma “this phone is too hot” blocked state until it’s cool enough). This sounds like the issue has to do with the new titanium casting that transfers heat differently and maybe isn’t tuned properly for their throttling? Not sure.
- sod 3y agoYes I agree. A phone should never be allowed to get unpleasant to touch. Maybe apple went to generous with their temp limit, or their sensor has too much play between devices. But also some programs shouldn't be allowed to go full blast when they are stuck in a self inflicted loop while waiting for something (instead of doing actual compute). And that is what I meant with activity monitor. If such behavior from popular software was more obvious, CPU waster could be helt accountable. Maybe you may even delegate a program to only use a single core or only e-cores. But instead, I guess, we have to settle with a thermal limit of 30°C so we won't even notice if an open app eats through our battery in the background.
- jamesgeck0 3y agoThe OS does limit the resources of background tasks.
- vlovich123 3y ago
- woah 3y agoWhy is weight even a concern? Thinness I get because that makes a real difference in your pocket, but what's the point of reducing the weight a tiny bit?
- appleskeptic 3y agoTo be fair, some ways of holding the weight of the phone in one hand, e.g. resting the weight on your pinky finger along bottom edge, can cause hand injury/RSI. So weight isn’t a totally solved problem.
- hombre_fatal 3y agoDoes this actually cause hand injury? The bent-pinky-finger social media panic was easily defeated by realizing both of your pinkies, not just the one that holds your phone, have the same bend: it’s a knuckle.
- appleskeptic 3y agoNot the bend. Just that it hurts if you hold it like that for too long :(
- Ayesh 3y agoI started to use those stand cases, and I'm not going back. They Make the phone so much more thicker, but also make it so much easier handle.
- WirelessGigabit 3y agoTry to get one of those holders that magnetically click to your iPhone. I don't want to say the brand, but something with socket. They are an RSI-saver.
- wilsonnb3 3y agoMostly because they insisted on making the Pro models with stainless steel instead of aluminum, which made them way heavier for no reason. The 34 gram difference between the iPhone 14 and 14 pro is very noticable in the hand. So now they have introduced the titanium frame as a solution to their self-inflicted problem, which still isn't as light as the aluminum non-pro iPhones.
- api 3y agoA related issue exists with M1/M2 Pro and Max chips in their laptops. They do not overheat (unless you're in a hot environment) since they have fans and seem to have included enough cooling for these chips, but you do not get the miraculous battery life with these that you do with the lighter versions. I guess they made the chip and RAM a lot bigger but didn't make the battery much bigger. The battery life is still decent (4-8 hours depending on work load) but not amazing.
- d3nj4l 3y agoYou should investigate your battery life. I have an M1 Pro (14" even) and I consistently get 10-12 hours on a fairly heavy developer workflow.
- highwaylights 3y agoYou'll pry my base model M1 Air from my cold dead hands. Yes it only has 8GB memory I don't care.
- rootusrootus 3y agoThat sounds like a bug. I have an M2 Max and battery life is excellent. Maybe not as good as my M1, but not far off. But it's a lot more powerful, so if I ask it to do resource intensive activities it can definitely drain the battery in a hurry. Running LLMs, in particular, is devastating for battery life.
- stainablesteel 3y agobuying brand new tech nowadays is basically signing up to be a beta user
- todotask 3y agoCertain app seem like those that were built with web app looking got my iPhone 13 overheated when upgraded to iOS 17, still happen on 17.0.1.
- tiffanyh 3y agoThermal Conductivity I wonder if this is related to the use of Titanium and the poor thermal conductivity of Titanium (17 W/m-K) vs. Aluminum (210 W/m-K). Aluminum dissipates heat more than 10x better than titanium. https://waykenrm.com/blogs/titanium-vs-aluminum/#:~:text=Alloys%20of%20aluminum%20possess%20high,%2C%20heat%20exchangers%2C%20and%20cookware https://waykenrm.com/blogs/titanium-vs-aluminum/#:~:text=All.... --- EDIT: I no longer think it's thermal conductivity due to the change in metals. See below. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37705152 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37705152
- ruph123 3y agoThe previous generation of iPhone Pros used stainless steel instead of Titanium.
- Filligree 3y agoWhich, at 15 W/mk, is even worse than titanium.
- oflannabhra 3y agoThe amount of titanium in the iPhone is about a 1-2mm band around the outside. The inner chassis is still aluminum, and they are diffusion bonded together. While that Ti is at the primary thermal boundary for the metals in the phone, I would guess (judging from experience with both stainless steel and titanium banded phones) that most heat escapes through the glass front and back of the phone, even though they have poor conductivity.
- AlanYx 3y ago>...most heat escapes through the glass front and back of the phone, even though they have poor conductivity. Some does, but given glass' very poor thermal conductivity (1.38 W/(m·K)), heat dissipation by the band around the outside is probably a very significant factor in total heat dissipation.
- 3y ago
- nerdjon 3y agoSo I have the iPhone 15 Pro Max. I have for sure had a few times that it got really hot, particularly when I was restoring it and it was doing a lot of background tasks. BUT so has every other single iPhone I have had since at least the X but I am pretty sure going farther back. There were always moments that it got hot and I remember it would always happen when I was first setting it up. For me at least I don't think it's happening anymore than it used too. For (likely) important context, I don't have a case on mine and I have had the Pro Max line for as long as it has existed.
- gdubs 3y agoI have a FineWoven case on my 15 Pro Max and, just adding to the anecdata here, have not had a single thermal issue. The only time it warmed up was during the initial data transfer. I'm pushing the phone with a lot of cinematic video recording, etc – remarkably cool. I watched this story blossom out of a few social accounts I had to mute because it started to feel like they really wanted to get likes on 'iPhone 15 Pro Max is a disaster' type posts. That's the tricky thing about the information environment we're in. A real issue affecting people? Or a non-issue that's being boosted and then picked up into a bigger story. Devices sometimes have issues – not debating that. Just saying, I feel like there's been very little skepticism applied here.
- nerdjon 3y agoI agree. Especially since this can make very easy clickbait headlines. I mean it has blown up enough that even my mom texted me “your dad read an article about the iPhone 15 heating up”. Lovely.
- Eldandan 3y agoSame here. 15 pro max and all is smooth sailing. Worst I had it was tethered to a laptop running zoom and a pc running another zoom with the phone charging. It had to stop charging at 80% for thermal protection. When the biggest complaints about a device are like this I feel good about the purchase.
- trogdor 3y ago
- jonplackett 3y agoI wonder if it’s anything to do with using a case. Since it’s a bit random that is. My 12 pro max in a thin silicone case can’t even handle being wirelessly charged with magsafe on a sunny day without shutting itself down into pitifully low brightness mode.
- sitzkrieg 3y agoim no apple proponent but i have used the xr,13 and 14 in full cases with no heat difference
- thefounder 3y ago>>some customers claiming the titanium frame becomes too hot to hold. They hold it wrong.
- highwaylights 3y agoWhat you can do as a consumer is.. not buy new iPhones? I don't mean as like a protest or anything. I mean just don't buy your iPhones new. They don't change much anymore, you can get caught out by this or Antennagate (or any other type of issue you get to encounter as a first mover), and the changes between years are genuinely minimal now. The iPhone came out in 2007. The iPhone 4 came out in 2010. The leap from the original iPhone to the 4 was absolutely worth buying a new device over IMHO. A lot changed in those 3 years. Not much of anything has changed in the last 6. Not really. It's still basically the iPhone X with a couple of screen size options. Yeah the chips are faster on paper, and the photos have gone from really good to better, but it's a really incremental product these days (the notch has a notch now). A used iPhone 13 Pro Max in great condition is about $450 these days where I am. A new 15 Pro Max is about $1200. I get that they're not the same device, but is it really 2.1x the device that the 13 is? Am I the only person that thinks about it this way? I get that I'm no fun at parties, you don't need to tell me. I'd probably tell you to be honest, were I invited, which I rarely am.
- atestu 3y agoYou're right, of course. I try to think about it like a car. I would never buy a new car, and a 5 year old luxury car is cheaper and better than a brand new non-luxury car. But the new ones are definitely shinier...
- uuddlrlrbaba 3y agoPlus the 5 year old car model has an established history of reported problems. A used buyer can review to make a decision based on actual reliability, vs whats essentially an unknown when new. Particularly with new model generations.
- smolyeet 3y agoIdk what this has to do with the issue though. I mean sure wait on launch for bugs, but how often you upgrade a phone is irrelevant. In the last 6 you get 5g, 120hz, usb c, more ram.
- 5350-uiop-1130 3y ago
- nottorp 3y agoThis is some kind of bug with throttling not being applied i guess, but I'd very much like Apple to test their devices outside a constant temperature dust free office. Right now it shuts down when it's too cold (and i mean like 0 C from personal experience, in my stopped car in winter), shuts down when it's too hot (car in summer). Keyboards fail if you dare to use them outdoors and are irreplaceable. Can they afford to use their devices in the real world a bit before launching? Not everyone always keeps their phone at a traditional office 18 C...
- WirelessGigabit 3y agoI have a BMW with only CarPlay (no Android Auto). Missus has an Android. So my phone was the GPS, even when she was driving. Because BMW only has Wireless Carplay the phone heats up like crazy. I don't understand why... my phone needs to be plugged in anyway because of the battery drain of the GPS and constant calculations of the screen. Why not utilize that as a means to send the screen data, allowing the WiFi chip to be almost turned off. And it gets worse if you use the charging pad in the car. Charging pad + Carplay is useless. Now she has an iPhone too and now the driver's phone is the GPS. But still, when driving, I need to put mine plugged in, under the seat to ensure it remains within temperature specs. And because of that I forget it every time, no problem, but when I get back to the car it is always overheated.
- bsndiieee665262 3y agofunny enough Porsche has added an air conditioning vent for the phone charging area on some of the new modes
- thedougd 3y agoReminded me of when BMW put iPhone slots in their car, only for it to be quickly outmoded with an iPhone connector change.
- bradly 3y ago> Can they afford to use their devices in the real world a bit before launching? What makes you think they don't?
- ctippett 3y agoAren't these new iPhones using 3nm based CPUs? My understanding is that this would normally translate to less power draw for equivalent clock speeds, so it's interesting to hear the new iPhone is not only overheating but also has a similar battery life to the previous model and only modest performance gains.
- mrtksn 3y agoThe culprit could be Instagram. Check this video out, iPhonedo measuring the phone temperature when running Instagram: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6X2ZIkYFsQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6X2ZIkYFsQ
- malchow 3y agoThe jellyroll li-ion batteries invented by Sony, perfected by U.S. firms, and their IP then stolen and maximized by Chinese firms (namely CATL), are an inelegant, imperfect, and in many cases fundamentally dangerous design. And those companies have no route to improving thermal handling. It needs to change.
- edandersen 3y agoYou're holding it wrong.
- rootusrootus 3y agoAnecdote: My 15 pro max has been totally fine. It has never gotten any warmer than previous iPhones. And the FineWoven case everyone is hating on? Just fine, so far. No worse than any other case I've owned over the years. Frankly I assume this is just the usual hyperbolic nonsense that accompanies every iPhone release. Some folks make a lot of money from all those clicks.
- needle0 3y agoSo, whatGate is the scandal's name this time?