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> 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?

Failure 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.

The 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.

If 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.

MKBHD 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

There’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”

I 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.

I'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.

> Warm, rather unpleasantly (but not concerningly) - sure, but hot - never.

If only we had a standardized scale to measure and express warm vs. cold…

For the issue at hand the temperature of the phone, even on the outside, is not very relevant.

What matters are

- whether it feels uncomfortable to humans

- whether it is unsafe for humans

I think both are mostly about the amount of heat the device transfers to human skin per unit of area per second.

The temperature of the outside of the phone is _a_ factor in that, but not the only one. Thermal conductivity of the material (compared to metals, wood doesn’t feels hot in summer or cold in winter, for example) and grip strength needed to reliably hold an object play a role, too.

The 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.)

Normies care about the fact that it's uncomfortably warm to hold, not whether the CPU is hot or not.

I 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.

> while outside in the sun on a hot day, you'll know what I mean, the performance is much worse.

Once I've had it outright shut down and show a black screen with a pretty thermometer, how's that for "performance is much worse"? ;)

(to be fair it was a spectacularly hot and sunny day, definitely in the "out of spec" range)

> 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

good excuse to put down the phone and enjoy the sun :)

Some of us live in places where there is more sunny & hot days than not, and your advice feels geared towards people who don't live such places ;)

I'll add that in some places sunny and hot days are sometimes better spent indoors with an aircon if possible.

Excessive heat, especially in humid regions can be daunting.

Summers in my country are getting hotter and sunnier and they've had an impact on my screen use (I hate glare!).

Absolutely, I have the 12 mini, and if my phone is plugged into my car while using maps + Spotify, it shuts down to prevent overheating.

Haha, I have exactly the same problem with my iPhone 12 Mini too, except I use Waze and YouTube Music with CarPlay, and it only happens on hot summer days, although it was in the shadow.

My hack was to put the phone so I could aim one of the AC outlets straight at it, which solved the problem.

They do Until they don’t

To 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...

It's very hard to accurately measure temperature of metallic objects. Most people don't have suitable thermometers, and even if they did they would probably use them wrong.

On the other hand, our skin is quite good at differentiating between warm and hot.

You’re not happy with our “warm - rather unpleasantly warm - hot” scale?

... but not concerningly!

When 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.