Apple released its new line of iPhone 15 devices – the iPhone 15, iPhone 15 Plus, iPhone 15 Pro, and iPhone 15 Pro Max – on September 22.
Now, users of the Pro and Pro Max are reporting that the devices may have overheating issues. This is the first phone model Apple has designed with titanium, which was chosen to make the phone lighter, but some believe the choice may also come with some unexpected repercussions.
What are users saying?
While Apple has yet to respond to the early pushback on the iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max, those who have gotten the phone in the last week are taking to online Apple forums to share their experiences with overheating.
The problems are occurring for users doing just about anything with their new phones. Some reports say the phone got too hot while taking pictures. Others say the phone got progressively warmer while watching a movie for 20 minutes. Others still say the phone’s temperature spiked even when not in use.
One user wrote: “When I was setting up the phone, it got so hot that it was almost uncomfortable to hold. I wanted to put it down, but I wanted to keep testing out my new phone, so I put up with the heat. It also seemed to warm up when I was just using Spotify and browsing through Safari. Then, when I used FaceTime for the first time, it heated up pretty bad again for the first 20 minutes or so, then it seemed to cool down.
“Same thing when I first put it down to charge. When I went to pick it back up after just a few minutes of putting it to charge, I could feel the heat through my OtterBox Symmetry case (which is made entirely out of hard plastic). When I took off the case, the phone was pretty hot again to the point where I wanted to put it down, but could still barely bear the heat.”
How hot is it getting?
iPhone users have taken the situation into their own hands to see just how hot their new phones are getting.
Reporters from The Wall Street Journal ran a temperature check on the iPhone 15 Pro Max and found that the phone went up to 112 degrees Fahrenheit while charging and utilizing other apps. Charging alone led to a temperature of 106 degrees Fahrenheit.
Other tests have yielded similar results – temperature readings nearing 110 degrees Fahrenheit.
On the Apple discussion forum, some users are saying that overheating is likely just the phone going through indexing – a process where the new phone creates an index of everything you have stored on it – emails, messages, photos, etc. – so items are quickly populated when searched. However, at this point, there’s no concrete evidence to support that idea.
Some users have said they faced similar issues with the iPhone 14 Pro, but not to this severity. Apple has yet to comment on the overheating issue.