Kuo: iPhone 15 Pro Overheating Issues Likely Due to Thermal Compromises, Not 3nm Node

[Moukee]

You’re right. I stand corrected.

GSMARENA and other sites are beginning to report that the iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max both have 8GB of RAM, because, it is written, “We know the A17 Pro should be paired with 8GB of RAM from leaks and benchmarks.”

iPhone 15 Pro Geekbench score crushes every single Android phone out there

But why does the iPhone 15 Pro pull better Geekbench scores than the the iPhone 15 Pro Max?

I'm not sure. Maybe the sample size is too small as of now to really say though? Maybe it can dissipate heat better for a short period of time and therefore run the chip at peak performance a little longer. Might be something structural, maybe the display, I really don't know. You'd assume the bigger corpus of the Max model would perform better if anything. The differences are only very marginal anyways though.

I did a random Geekbench 6 at some point (not sure if the phone was completely idle or still doing some migration stuff) and it scored 2910/7177.

 

[Chancha]

What country is this? I thought Apple's 14 day policy was worldwide, unless a country made them have a more permissive one. I've never heard of LESS.

Hong Kong.
The reason is we have a long history of “consumers” abusing the return policy lol.

For instance some shopping malls offer free parking if you spend more than a few hundred dollars, then some smart ass thought to buy an iPad then return it next week he comes, rinse and repeat, this got viral then everyone started doing it.

The other reason is returns with swapped or stolen parts, the device can turn on but stay at apple logo screen, where the Genius has to determine this needing service, but in fact the guts inside are already swapped out.

Because we have close to no real consumer protection laws, companies tend to not offer unconditional returns, but Apple Store being Apple they did start with that. After some years of abuse they just gave up. I almost forgot to mention new iPhone scrapping and flipping business that also abuse return policy.

 

[mrmister]

Hong Kong.
The reason is we have a long history of “consumers” abusing the return policy lol.

For instance some shopping malls offer free parking if you spend more than a few hundred dollars, then some smart ass thought to buy an iPad then return it next week he comes, rinse and repeat, this got viral then everyone started doing it.

The other reason is returns with swapped or stolen parts, the device can turn on but stay at apple logo screen, where the Genius has to determine this needing service, but in fact the guts inside are already swapped out.

Because we have close to no real consumer protection laws, companies tend to not offer unconditional returns, but Apple Store being Apple they did start with that. After some years of abuse they just gave up. I almost forgot to mention new iPhone scrapping and flipping business that also abuse return policy.

Fascinating! Thanks for letting us know, that's crazy and interesting.

 

[w_aldo]

"Bad thermal design" would not equate to a hot device. If the actual device frame is getting hot, that means that thermal energy is being moved away from the processor effectively, and dissipated across the device.

It's wild how many people in this thread don't actually understand that.

A cold device under load would be more worrying, because all of that heat would be trapped close to the processor/battery etc.

I've not had any problems with excessive heat. I imagine the battery would also be drained rapidly if this was the case. It sounds more like a problem with some rogue CPU process than an actual cooling problem

 

[R2DHue]

I'm not sure. Maybe the sample size is too small as of now to really say though? Maybe it can dissipate heat better for a short period of time and therefore run the chip at peak performance a little longer. Might be something structural, maybe the display, I really don't know. You'd assume the bigger corpus of the Max model would perform better if anything. The differences are only very marginal anyways though.

I did a random Geekbench 6 at some point (not sure if the phone was completely idle or still doing some migration stuff) and it scored 2910/7177.

Your numbers are better, but still lower on multi-core.

I consistently read in articles that in Geekbench tests,

the iPhone 15 Pro achieves 2908 points on single-core performance and 7328 points on multi-core performance tests, and,

the iPhone 15 Pro Max achieves 2,846 points in single-core performance and 7,024 points in multi-core performance tests.

Like you said, you’d think the overall larger size of the iPhone 15 Pro Max should make it better suited to dissipating heat (even better at it than the iPhone 15 Pro), lessening the need for thermal throttling (even more so than the smaller iPhone 15 Pro). If anything, the Max should run faster, not merely the same (let alone less).

These are nontrivial numbers. The minor difference in display pixel count shouldn’t account for that much of a difference.

The differences, in the three hundreds, are significant enough — especially the multi-core numbers — that it would probably translate to a palpably different real world UX between the two, especially after software ramps up for the A17. (Games, frame rates, encodes/decodes…)

Maybe there’s a software drag going on that Apple can fix. IDK. 🤷‍♂️

 

[NotApplicable]

No heat issues here. But I don’t game.

 

[aevan]

Yeah mine hasn't gotten remotely hot yet plus I don't plan on bending it like a moron, so it likely won't break.

I only had my iPhone 15 Pro for a day, but I had no issues so far.

Played some Dolby Vision Ahsoka in Disney+ on max brightness, played a bit of Honkai Star Rail, downloaded a bunch of things - standard iPhone kind of warm under load. Cool otherwise.

 

[Sebalto]

I only had my iPhone 15 Pro for a day, but I had no issues so far.

Played some Dolby Vision Ahsoka in Disney+ on max brightness, played a bit of Honkai Star Rail, downloaded a bunch of things - standard iPhone kind of warm under load. Cool otherwise.

Like with absolutely anything social media / internet blows things up out of proportion.

 

[willnpc]

“Hot to the touch”

So people are equating hot = overheating?

Anything for clicks and paranoia.

Yeah....I mean their $1300 iPhones are only getting around 130 degrees....thats warm at best...what babies, suck it up

 

[willnpc]

Glad I kept my 14pro.

Why in the world would you of even considered getting the 15 pro? I have the 14 pro as well as there was no must have features (as usual) on the 15...seems kind of wasteful...No? I thought Apple and their users were for the environment....but I'm sure they will gladly take your money if you want to buy one

 

[R2DHue]

"Bad thermal design" would not equate to a hot device. If the actual device frame is getting hot, that means that thermal energy is being moved away from the processor effectively, and dissipated across the device.

It's wild how many people in this thread don't actually understand that.

Bad thermal design does not equate to a hot device?!

In every situation?

Even ”great” thermal design can manifest as an overall “hot device” or even the hot “frame” of a third-party iPhone case. Thermal designs work to the best of their abilities — which does not translate to a room temperature or cold phone or device or computer at all times. Fanless Macbook Airs get warm — even subjectivity hot — and their thermal dissipation designs are state-of-the-art.

It’s not a question of a device never getting even warm, it’s a question of whether the thermal design is engineered well enough that the SoC and other components don’t need to dial back their clock frequencies as often, negatively impacting performance. ICs can get surprisingly hot (relatively) before thermal throttling kicks in. (SSD modules are notorious for getting boiling hot — which, ironically negatively impacts the lifespan of the SSD while also positively impacting the lifespan of the SSD because very high heat helps clear “trapped charges” lingering in cells that remain in “erased spaces.” It begs the question, Is a 1TB iPhone slower than a 512GB [or lower] iPhone?)

People who own iPhone 15 Pros — who have prior experience owning iPhone models — are getting flamed in here for simply relaying their true observations about their phone getting abnormally “hot.”

The statistics are as yet unclear, but I’ve heard enough from honest, technically capable people in these and other forums who say that their iPhone 15 Pros are getting unusually hot — even showing the rare “thermometer” icon and message and freezing until the phone cools down enough.

Based on this, I surmise this a statistically significant issue affecting many iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max users — unlike the violent OIS shaking of one of the camera sensors issue that affected only a fraction of iPhone 14 users and which was fixed by Apple via a software update.

I find it inexplicable that the most valuable company in human history seems to have such a conspicuous Quality Assurance issue on its hands. How did so many iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max models make it through the QA process and out into the supply chain?!

And to everyone who owns an iPhone 15 Pro or iPhone 15 Pro Max that doesn’t suffer overheating issues: CONGRATULATIONS!

But there’s no need to get pedantic and snotty toward iPhone 15 Pro owners who are experiencing and reporting this issue. Simply unnecessary.

I hope (maybe unrealistically) that there will be a forthcoming Apple iOS update fix to address 1.) iPhone 15 Pro overheating issues — but not one that “tunes down” its max potential performance, and 2.) fixes the lower performance issue of the iPhone 15 Pro Max compared to the higher performing iPhone 15 Pro.

The Pro Max’s performance should be at least the same as the as the iPhone 15 Pro, but preferably better.

 

[beerseagulls]

I had the iPhone 14 Pro Max in the Otterbox Defender case. During the last 10 months, it never experienced any heat issues when I shoot video in 4K for 10 or more at room temperature.(74 degrees or lower)

However, for the last few days, my new iPhone 15 Pro Max in the Otterbox Defender case must have overheated while shooting 4k video of my cat in the same room. I had the phone on a tripod and started recording. When I came back, I noticed that the phone was completely shutdown. I had to press the power switch to let it boot up again. Based on the recorded video, it appears that they all stopped from 3:52 to 4:47 into the recording.

Since I only use rugged cases like the Defender, I'm wondering if there's another rugged case that will exacerbate the heat issue?

Thanks!

 

[MathersMahmood]

Update: downloaded Diablo immortal and Genshin impact over 5G while using my phone and it didn’t even get warm.

I think I got a good batch I honestly don’t have the issue at all.

May be silicone lottery.

I did set up the phone as new.

 

[R2DHue]

Update: downloaded Diablo immortal and Genshin impact over 5G while using my phone and it didn’t even get warm.

I think I got a good batch I honestly don’t have the issue at all.

May be silicone lottery.

I did set up the phone as new.

Yours probably wasn’t assembled on a Monday.

 

[OUsooner08]

If this was an actual hardware issue we would most likely see issues across all devices. However, my wife and I both have 15 Pros, my development department has 15 Pros, and I have a few friends with 15 Pros, and only 1 of them is having an issue, but he also has been using the Apps that Apple has identified are not optimized in some way.

 

[Arctic Tech]

Mistake post

 

[Arctic Tech]

I've had zero issues with overheating....seems to be a small subset of folks...either way I hope apple can address the issue and not ignore it.

While I am glad you haven’t had any issues with your phone yet, that is hardly a basis to assume it affects only a small subset of people. For it to be this widely discussed so soon after release tells us it is most likely more wide spread than that. I run an electronics repair store in Fairbanks Alaska (not a huge customer base to be sure), and I have already had 2 customers come in complaining of that problem and I sent one back to the store to return it after it got to hot to touch while just logging into their iCloud account (not syncing any data though). This has all the hallmarks of a hardware design failure, and I don’t see this being solved with anything other than throttling through software unless Apple recalls and redesigns the phones.

 

[OUsooner08]

While I am glad you haven’t had any issues with your phone yet, that is hardly a basis to assume it affects only a small subset of people. For it to be this widely discussed so soon after release tells us it is most likely more wide spread than that. I run an electronics repair store in Fairbanks Alaska (not a huge customer base to be sure), and I have already had 2 customers come in complaining of that problem and I sent one back to the store to return it after it got to hot to touch while just logging into their iCloud account (not syncing any data though). This has all the hallmarks of a hardware design failure, and I don’t see this being solved with anything other than throttling through software unless Apple recalls and redesigns the phones.

1) This isn’t a hardware issue, otherwise all the devices would be seeing it.
2) This was isolated to bugs and several unoptimized 3rd party apps
3) This has been confirmed fixed by numerous tech outlets by iOS update 17.03.

 

[Arctic Tech]

1) This isn’t a hardware issue, otherwise all the devices would be seeing it.
2) This was isolated to bugs and several unoptimized 3rd party apps
3) This has been confirmed fixed by numerous tech outlets by iOS update 17.03.

1) hardware issues don’t always affect all devices 🙄
2) many people affected aren’t running those apps
3) see software throttling (remember battery gate)

 

[OUsooner08]

1) hardware issues don’t always affect all devices 🙄
2) many people affected aren’t running those apps
3) see software throttling (remember battery gate)

You can roll your eyes all you want like an immature person. You’re the one that said it was a hardware defect and said they’d need to recall the phones. If it’s not affecting all devices it’s NOT hardware related needing a recall of phones. In fact you said this has all the hallmarks of a hardware design failure…it doesn’t, period! The Xbox 360 red ring of death is an hardware design failure. Apple specifically said they isolated the issue, and has rolled out a fix.

The issue has been fixed, per numerous tech outlets with confirmed no throttling. Your 2 customers is anecdotal evidence and provides zero hard data for you to draw conclusions from.

You also fail to understand the design, it’s basically a titanium skin, it still has SS as a large part of the frame.

As a developer for both platforms this was absolutely in line with bugs in either the OS, apps, or both. I’ve had many of Android phones get super hot on me, heck there’s entire threads on the Pixel about this issue, which Android 14 appears to have addressed.

 

[sstiwari]

If this was an actual hardware issue we would most likely see issues across all devices. However, my wife and I both have 15 Pros, my development department has 15 Pros, and I have a few friends with 15 Pros, and only 1 of them is having an issue, but he also has been using the Apps that Apple has identified are not optimized in some way.

In my view it is not only software. It might be related to different components from different vendors. Moreover, no two processors are identical in efficiency and performance. You accept those which are above some decided threshold.

My iPhone 15 PM is overheating from day 1, even with 17.0.3. Today I installed 17.1 RC, and again did my overheating experiment.

I took some 15 random snaps from my air-conditioned office in quick succession using native apple Camera App(used all three lenses, portrait and macro). I did this after removing the phone from case, so that there is no barrier to heat dissipation. After shooting the frames were hot(more than warm).

And then I opened the native Apple Photos App, the sync was paused with three reasons in succession:

1. Syncing paused....... "iPhone Needs to cool down". Lasted 2 mins. Took a screenshot.
2. Syncing paused....... "Optimizing System Performance" Lasted 1 min.
3. Syncing paused....... "Optimizing Battery Power". Lasted for 15 mins. Took a screenshot.

I waited for 17.1 to see if its software and can be fixed, but disappointed. So, I think now its time to contact apple.

 

[Arctic Tech]

You can roll your eyes all you want like an immature person. You’re the one that said it was a hardware defect and said they’d need to recall the phones. If it’s not affecting all devices it’s NOT hardware related needing a recall of phones. In fact you said this has all the hallmarks of a hardware design failure…it doesn’t, period! The Xbox 360 red ring of death is an hardware design failure. Apple specifically said they isolated the issue, and has rolled out a fix.

The issue has been fixed, per numerous tech outlets with confirmed no throttling. Your 2 customers is anecdotal evidence and provides zero hard data for you to draw conclusions from.

You also fail to understand the design, it’s basically a titanium skin, it still has SS as a large part of the frame.

As a developer for both platforms this was absolutely in line with bugs in either the OS, apps, or both. I’ve had many of Android phones get super hot on me, heck there’s entire threads on the Pixel about this issue, which Android 14 appears to have addressed.

The rolling of the eyes is because someone of your intelligence and experience should know that hardware problems don’t always affect all devices and recalls happen when a margin threshold is reached (Wondering where in our brief conversation I have demonstrated immaturity outside of fore-mentioned emoji). I also stated that it was my belief that it wouldn’t be solved correctly without a recall. I am not all knowing and am fine with being wrong, hell in this case I would prefer to be wrong. As for my 3 customers, I prefaced that my market is small and I don’t have a large consumer base. Therefore I was using that as a reference to my own experience in the matter, so it was obvious I wasn’t talking out of my behind. Obviously my 3 customers don’t not encompass all users, so please don’t imply that intention on my behalf. I spend everyday dealing with electronics befallen by recurring problems that The manufactures say are a real problem (or don’t), yet they continue to occur en mass (see HP laptops bios failing so they won’t charge unless the machine is off. HP still stays that that problem didn’t exists, yet they say they fixed it). I do understand the design quite well and I understand thermal dynamics rather well too, though an expert I am not. I’m just a guy who helps consumers with their broken electronics and tries to help guide them towards making the best purchases for their needs. as For the claims about the software fix it took weeks for the community to discover the software throttling in the battery gate saga. I'm not hear saying that they did throttle, I’m just saying that I have no problem believing that would be their course of action (They have a track record of BS‘Ing in response to like things.). This puts them on par with most every manufacturer of electronics.

Another thing to note is the person that left the post directly above this one. Again someone who is experiencing these problems outside the criteria you insist this only happens within. We are both clearly intelligent, informed, and experienced. So at this point I feel it is safe to say that we can agree to disagree.

 

[Predtek]

Is this even news? My previous phones iPhone 12, 13, 14 pro max all throttles like crazy. The charging gets hot when it’s below say 70% (and it’s slow). Gaming? Yea they run great but they heat up so quickly that the screen dims so much that you cannot see anything much. Console gaming? Good luck. Yet I got the 15 pro max for the usb c(I know it should have been on iPhone 13). Last night I touched my phone around 3am and it was boiling. It was put to sleep. I have no idea why. This is new issue and I believe it can be solved with updates. But all other hardware thermal issues can not be fixed. Shame on you Apple. Really.

 

[Predtek]

This phone sounds like a complete wet duck. Glad i kept my 13 pro max

Try run the game Pascal’s wager. Good luck. 13 14 12have the same throttling issues.

 

[Predtek]

Complaints about heat issues with the iPhone 15 Pro models are not related to TSMC's 3-nanometer node that was used for the A17 Pro chip, according to well-respected Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo.

Kuo says that overheating could be caused by "compromises made in the thermal system design" that allowed Apple to cut down on the weight of the iPhone 15 Pro models. Kuo says that the reduced heat dissipation area and titanium frame have negatively impacted the thermal efficiency of the devices.

Apple is expected to address the thermal issues through software updates, but improvements will be limited unless Apple plans to lower processor performance. Kuo believes that if Apple is unable to "properly address this issue," shipments could be impacted over the life cycle of the iPhone 15 Pro.

There have been reports about the iPhone 15 Pro models becoming hot to the touch, and some tests have suggested that when this happens, the processor is throttled in order to cool the iPhone down. These tests have been benchmarks and extreme use cases that may not impact users in day-to-day life, but it remains to be seen how the iPhone 15 Pro models will run console-quality games like Resident Evil Village and Death Stranding.

Article Link: Kuo: iPhone 15 Pro Overheating Issues Likely Due to Thermal Compromises, Not 3nm Node

It will not impact anyone who is listening to music or messaging. Console gaming? Start cooking eggs.