WSJ / full text / iPhone 15 Pro Owners Complain About Overheating Problems ...................
WSJ
TECHNOLOGY
PERSONAL TECHNOLOGY
Sept. 27, 2023
iPhone 15 Pro Owners Complain About Overheating Problems
The issue could threaten Apple’s premium phones, a cash cow essential to its growth and profits
By Aaron Tilley, Joanna Stern, and Yang Jie
The new iPhone 15 Pro may be too hot for some to handle. Literally.
Apple’s priciest new iPhones are heating up in some scenarios, reaching high temperatures that make them difficult to touch at certain times, according to reviews, tests by The Wall Street Journal and social-media posts from buyers in China, the U.S. and Canada. Some iPhone 14 Pro owners have noticed similar hot temperatures over the past year.
The high temperatures in Apple’s newest 15 Pro models -- typically when charging and using intensive apps -- are prompting concerns that the company might need to address overheating in software updates that could impact performance. Premium iPhones have long been a critical cash cow for Apple as smartphone demand has slumped globally. The company is hoping the iPhone 15, especially its Pro models, will return its business to growth.
Thomas Galvin, a 23-year-old from Cleveland, says his iPhone 15 Pro Max has been “super hot” and that he is considering returning it. Apple customer support told him the heat was a result of setting up the new phone, but even a few days later, it is still “way worse than the iPhone 13 Pro Max,” he said.
Apple declined to comment on the reports.
Other users on X (formerly known as Twitter) and Reddit have had similar complaints about the heat, with some mentioning that the phone had become so warm it is difficult to hold.
The Wall Street Journal’s Joanna Stern noted in her review last week that the iPhone 15 Pro Max hit 106 degrees Fahrenheit while charging. In further testing, the phone reached temperatures up to 112 degrees when simultaneously charging and doing processor-intensive tasks, such as gaming.
The iPhone 14 Pro Max hit similar temperatures in the same test. During typical everyday usage -- texting, emailing, scrolling through Instagram -- the temperatures have been in the normal range for both of our test phones.
Titanium troubles?
Ming-Chi Kuo, an influential Apple analyst at TF International Securities who follows the company’s supply chain, attributed the heat issues to the iPhone 15 Pro’s new lightweight design, which might not dissipate heat as well as past models. The new titanium frame found in just the Pro models is also likely an issue, Kuo said. Titanium is a poor conductor of heat, making it difficult to get heat out of the phone.
In a test of an iPhone 15 Pro Max by Chinese tech information platform DGtle, downloading the hit mobile game “Genshin Impact” on a 5G network caused the phone to heat up to around 122 degrees Fahrenheit. Playing the game in high-resolution mode for about 15 minutes kept the phone at a similar temperature.
On another popular Chinese social-media platform, a user identified as Zengzeng complained that her new iPhone 15 Pro frequently overheated. She said she was trying to charge the device while sending text and voice messages, which normally doesn’t put too much stress on a phone’s processor, but got a “charge on hold” warning because the phone was overheating.
The trade-off between weight and heat dissipation has long been a challenge for Apple. The company is considering using a new material for the phone’s printed circuit board next year, making it thinner and better at dissipating heat, according to people familiar with Apple’s supply plans.
In certain regions, including China, Apple includes a physical SIM card slot in its iPhones because of regulatory requirements and user habits. Adding a slot to the phone’s already-cramped interior creates additional challenges for heat dissipation, said people familiar with the iPhone’s design. This design isn’t new and hasn’t proved to be a problem in previous years, but it might contribute to the overheating problem, along with other factors such as the use of titanium, the people said.
‘The Icarus theory’
Kyle Wiens, CEO of iFixit, a popular iPhone repair website, also said that one potential reason for the hot iPhones is that the new titanium case design has less mass to absorb the heat.
“It’s the Icarus theory,” he added. “Apple flew too close to the sun, and the wings started melting off.”
September is usually a season when users discover challenges with new iPhones or the software that runs them. Last year, for example, some iPhone 14 owners set off Apple’s car-crash detection while on roller coasters. The company later released software updates to improve the feature.
Apple is facing a slowing smartphone market, making any problems with its latest models an issue for the company. Global smartphone shipments are expected to decline 6% annually to 1.15 billion devices by the end of this year, the lowest smartphone shipment figure in a decade, according to Counterpoint Research.
iPhone sales declined 2.4% to $39.7 billion in the company’s most recent earnings report for the quarter ended July 1, missing analysts’ expectations. The iPhone still takes up around half of Apple’s total sales.
Many of the social media postings indicate that problems mostly exist in the Pros versions of the latest iPhone. The more expensive Pro models are especially important to Apple, as it keeps sales moving upward even if the company is shipping less phone volumes.
Kuo said that Apple could address this heat issue with software updates, but improvements might be limited if Apple doesn’t lower the chip’s performance.
“If Apple does not properly address this issue, it could negatively impact shipments over the product life cycle of the iPhone 15 Pro series,” Kuo said.
Write to Joanna Stern at joanna.stern@wsj.com, Aaron Tilley at aaron.tilley@wsj.com and Yang Jie at jie.yang@wsj.com
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