iPhone 17 Pro 17pro still getting hot, the same as the 15pro during everyday tasks :(

[chfilm]

Hey,

So I had two main issues with my 15pro. One was the god awful battery life, the other was the constant heat it would develop. I was really hoping that these two issues would be fixed but I was wrong. While the battery life is better than on my two year old device, it’s still not where I would like it to be. It’s not even 10% per hour of screen on time :/

But what’s worse is how hot it gets constantly even with the vapor chamber. While i will say that it cools down a bit faster, I’m surprised that it’s reaching these levels of temperature at all during things like safari or FaceTime calls. Anybody else experiencing this?
Regarding the battery it’s probably because i was forced to buy the physical sim version here in Europe yet another downside thanks to the EU when it comes to Apple this year ..

 

[StumpyBloke]

My 17 Pro Max has not even got warm yet. What are you doing on it at the time it gets hot? Just Safari and FT?

And my battery life is excellent as well.

 

[Thor_9]

Outside of the initial setup when my 17 PM got a little warm, I have had zero heat issues. It hasn’t even felt warm.

 

[RRC]

Mine hasn't got warm even on initial setup/ transfer.

Sure it's not something you have on your devices causing it?!

 

[Jetcat3]

My 17 Pro is noticeably cooler than my 15 Pro.

 

[sax6575]

I played Death Stranding on my 17 Pro Max for over an hour, and the phone didn’t even feel remotely warm.

 

[Treevarg]

Happening to me too. It’ll be cold when in my pocket, but as soon as I start using it I can feel warmth on the front and back. Doesn’t really matter what I’m doing, even if it’s just light browsing on Safari or Reddit.

Battery is letting me down somewhat too, so I assume they’re related.

 

[chfilm]

It seems worse inside buildings with bad reception. Not sure what it could be on my devices. Even while I was writing the initial post it got very warm (but I was as I said inside a building with poor reception by a window with bright sunlight so the display went up almost to maximum.) the other day I was on a FaceTime call and it became CRAZY hot, but that was at home and in WiFi. I don’t get it.. shouldn’t this be vastly improved? As you can see by the screenshot in my initial post it’s measurable at least once per day. And funny enough not even during gaming!

 

[Rogifan]

I noticed my 17 Pro gets very hot when I’m using the Roku app and my Air Pods Pro.

 

[chfilm]

It got so bad during the evening, at some point it showed 20% battery left after 3,7 hours of screen-on-time and it was permanently hot besides multiple restarts, just being in safari, with all other apps closed. I decided to do a dfu reset and am reinstalling from iCloud now- hope that it was just some sort of glitch…. If this keeps happening I‘ll ask for a new device, it can‘t be that hot from doing basically nothing!?

 

[BigMcGuire]

Yeah sounds like something is wrong with your phone - that's a pretty steep drop. If you still have heat a day after your reset - I'd be looking at a replacement.

Plug it into the wall and let it churn through what it needs to - running off of wall power (set battery to 80% charge) - then revert to normal settings after its calmed down.

 

[chfilm]

Yeah sounds like something is wrong with your phone - that's a pretty steep drop. If you still have heat a day after your reset - I'd be looking at a replacement.

Plug it into the wall and let it churn through what it needs to - running off of wall power (set battery to 80% charge) - then revert to normal settings after its calmed down.

I think so too. But I’m really curious how much warm temperature during normal use is expected with this device and at what point i should be worried.

 

[thmsnt]

I think some of this seemingly random heating is due to iOS 26 itself. Everyone is running a 26.0 build right now, and it's known that the first X.1 update tends to smooth/fix things. The 26.1 beta just came out yesterday in fact.

 

[BigMcGuire]

That and, I wonder if the "vapor" chamber makes it so the heat that is normally confined to one corner/part of the phone is now spread throughout the body - making it more noticeable?

 

[S.B.G]

Outside of the initial unboxing, setup and restoration from backup, my iPhone hasn't been warm or hot and the battery... right now is at 93% and it's been off the charger for about 10 hours or so.

 

[chfilm]

Outside of the initial unboxing, setup and restoration from backup, my iPhone hasn't been warm or hot and the battery... right now is at 93% and it's been off the charger for about 10 hours or so.

93% after 10 hours!? Have you been using it at all?

 

[chfilm]

That and, I wonder if the "vapor" chamber makes it so the heat that is normally confined to one corner/part of the phone is now spread throughout the body - making it more noticeable?

hm not sure, it feels exactly the same like my 15pro, just the entire device gets warm/hot but so did the 15 pro.

 

[S.B.G]

93% after 10 hours!? Have you been using it at all?

No, not too much.

 

[uacd]

Hmm, so my assumptions seem to be correct.

First they would put very hot chip inside 15 and many users experienced overheating and subsequent battery life issues. Then they made some thermal improvements in 16 Pro but those still are not enough, and my gf constantly has her phone overheat and battery is often draining like crazy, and seems that addition of water chamber was Apple's way of putting some water onto already burning fire.

The issue is in the CHIPSET. The A19 Pro and older 3nm iterations of this very-same chip. It has around 9W TDP, about twice more than older iPhones like 13, 12, X and such.

My few advices to you to keep things cooler:
- use low power mode as often as you can since it throttles processor
- use 60Hz instead of 120 in display settings
- disable all apps in "background app refresh"

 

[chfilm]

Hmm, so my assumptions seem to be correct.

First they would put very hot chip inside 15 and many users experienced overheating and subsequent battery life issues. Then they made some thermal improvements in 16 Pro but those still are not enough, and my gf constantly has her phone overheat and battery is often draining like crazy, and seems that addition of water chamber was Apple's way of putting some water onto already burning fire.

The issue is in the CHIPSET. The A19 Pro and older 3nm iterations of this very-same chip. It has around 9W TDP, about twice more than older iPhones like 13, 12, X and such.

My few advices to you to keep things cooler:
- use low power mode as often as you can since it throttles processor
- use 60Hz instead of 120 in display settings
- disable all apps in "background app refresh"

I agree with you on the chipset assessment- but switching to low power/60hz mode just makes the phone feel broken! Plus then you have these people who seemingly have no issues whatsoever- how do we explain that?

 

[uacd]

how do we explain that?

Probably different use scenarios, I doubt you have defective battery or something like that. Some people would usually use their phones in dim environments (for example in the evening, to scroll Instagram and such), this will use around 30% brightness so less battery usage, or maybe they use different set of apps.

Also it seems like using case can overheat iPhone even more. So if you use one (especially silicone/rubber) , it would trap more heat

 

[chfilm]

Probably different use scenarios, I doubt you have defective battery or something like that. Some people would usually use their phones in dim environments (for example in the evening, to scroll Instagram and such), this will use around 30% brightness so less battery usage, or maybe they use different set of apps.

Also it seems like using case can overheat iPhone even more. So if you use one (especially silicone/rubber) , it would trap more heat

Nope, no case here..
the wild thing is that I’ve had the heating issues only using stock apps Like FaceTime, safari, photos etc.
but let’s see how it behaves now after the reset!

 

[uacd]

Nope, no case here..
the wild thing is that I’ve had the heating issues only using stock apps Like FaceTime, safari, photos etc.
but let’s see how it behaves now after the reset!

Hmm, maybe if that continues it is worthy taking it back to Apple. Shouldn’t be the case on new phone. No, I mean 16 Pro also overheated on FaceTime for no apparent reason, but I don’t know, it is better to return now than deal with any issues then

 

[iTom17]

“Regarding the battery it’s probably because i was forced to buy the physical sim version here in Europe yet another downside thanks to the EU when it comes to Apple this year ..”

I don’t think it makes that much of a difference. I was a little worried about this as well, but then I thought a bit more about it and realized it differs only two hours (in terms of watching video) between the physical SIM and eSIM only models. Two hours sounds like a lot, but when you compare directly to the iPhone 15 Pro Max you’re still getting 8 extra hours out of it rather than 10. Yes, of course 10 would’ve been even better, and I believe there should have been an option to get eSIM only as well (especially since you can after all get the iPhone Air, which is globally eSIM only). But any + in battery life nice.

That said, if you’re experiencing issues with battery life it’s usually either a defective battery (meaning you should have Apple fix it) or you could try and change some settings. The latter might not sound ideal - you bought an expensive smartphone and don’t want to have to turn down a slate of settings to make it work right for you - but sometimes there’s options you clearly don’t need nor use. Disabling those might help at least a bit. Think of turning off background updating of apps, turning off notifications for apps you don’t need notifications from, that sort of stuff.

As for heat: I haven’t experienced such thing yet, although I should add I don’t play any games other than Duolingo and Wordfeud. Mostly it’s just WhatsApp, browsing the web, using e-mail, making calls, watching videos, scrolling through Facebook/Instagram and shooting photos and videos.

 

[petershaw_]

My few advices to you to keep things cooler:
- use low power mode as often as you can since it throttles processor
- use 60Hz instead of 120 in display settings
- disable all apps in "background app refresh"

To be fair, it's really awful that I have to throttle the phone like this just to make sure it doesn't overheat.