iPhone 14 Pro gets very hot even with very light use

[jollino]

Hi all,
I'm posting here in hope that someone may have some suggestions on this odd issue. It's not a strictly recent problem but it's become more apparent with the summer heat: my iPhone 14 Pro gets _very_ hot when I do pretty much anything, but only when it's in use. As long as it's idling, it's fine. I pick it up, and take as little as a few photos or browse a few pages, and it starts heating up like a portable oven. Battery life also suffers a little from it, but I'm not sure if it's from its health being 85% or actually related to that.

Sometimes it gets so bad, especially if direct sunlight is involved, that the screen quickly dims to the point of being virtually unreadable. I am aware that that's by design, but if it happens in a matter of five minutes, it does seem like something is off.

Things I have already tried:
- disabled background refresh entirely
- logged out and back into iCloud (the joy of re-adding cards to Wallet on both iPhone and Watch...)
- killed all apps, and kept doing so every time I pick up the phone
- rebooted the phone multiple times
- cold rebooted the phone multiple times (holding the power button until the logo shows up, and keeping it down until it happens again)
- deleted a few apps (I arguably have a lot of stuff installed that I don't even use, but AFAIK iOS segregates them so it shouldn't matter)
- removed the only third-party widget I had on my lock screen (Halide), in my today view (Stocard), and my home screens (FlightRadar24)
- tried not using a case, which made no difference except me getting paranoid

I also called Apple, and they found nothing wrong with a diagnostic checkup. As per their suggestion, I also:
- disabled autoplay for animated images and videos (!?)
- disabled Raise to Wake
- killed all Safari tabs (I had about 500, but I've also had as many 500...)
- deleted VPN settings (IPVanish and my own home Wireguard, plus HTTPS over Cloudflare)
- started all pending app updates
- let them run diagnostics, which highlighted nothing unusual with the hardware

What I haven't done yet, and I'd like to postpone it as a last resort, is restoring the phone. That's just because it takes ages to do, especially logging back into everything, and I currently have a complicated personal situation (hospitals, etc.) that makes it inconvenient to spend hours doing that, especially without any guarantee that it will solve the problem.

One thing stands out to me, though the Apple representative sort of dismissed it: my analytics logs are full of User Fault reports for multiple processes, mostly apsd, icloudsubscriptionoptimizerd, IMDPersistenceAgenc.xpc, InstagramNotificationExtension, NotificationServiceExtension inside the Facebook app, MessengerNotificationServiceExtension, photoanalysisd, ServiceExtension inside Whatsapp, siriactionsd, . While it seems that Meta is particularly bad at this, the presence of first-party processes is a little odd. The fault type is always EXC_GUARD and the indicator is XPC_EXIT_REASON_FAULT, for all of them.
I also have an ungodly amount of JetsamEvent logs, with the largest processes being (from a cursory look): Waze, hitachiapp (no idea what that even is), kernel_task (!), Instagram and com.apple.WebKit.WebContent.
There are also multiple logs about duetexpertd and others reporting high CPU usage ("90 seconds CPU time over 115 seconds (79% cpu usage exceeding limit of 50% cpu over 180 seconds") but those seem to happen at night, when the phone is plugged in.

I suppose that over the weekend I'll try uninstalling all Meta apps and reinstalling them, in hope that all caches will be cleared. I know, Meta is horrible and all that, but I have to have those installed.
For the record, the nearest Apple Store is over 200 km from me so I can't just take it to a Genius Bar (assuming those are still a thing). Been trying to tell Apple for twenty years that this side of the country could use one, but oh well.

If anyone has any idea about what else I may look at, I would be forever grateful. As I mentioned, I'm dealing with a lot of stuff and the last thing I need is my phone dying on me at an inconvenient time.

Thank you all in advance, even just for reading this all the way.

 

[decypher44]

You’re using the Instagram app? The current version is destroying the battery and heating up the phone in seconds. See recent review comments in the App Store.

 

[now i see it]

If it started heating up in the summer- that’s the reason. Ambient temperature is high.
All OLED iPhones dim dark when out in the sun for a short time.

 

[jollino]

You’re using the Instagram app? The current version is destroying the battery and heating up the phone in seconds. See recent review comments in the App Store.

I am, and things very slightly improved after I uninstalled all Meta apps and reinstalled them; given how often they showed up in the logs, I assumed something was up with them. Instagram definitely turns the phone into an oven, but even when not using it by killing all apps and making sure that the Meta apps have no background refresh, it tends to get warm quite easily. I also unpaired and re-paired my Watch just in case something was stuck between them.

If it started heating up in the summer- that’s the reason. Ambient temperature is high.
All OLED iPhones dim dark when out in the sun for a short time.

I wasn't aware of that. It's definitely become more of an issue in the summer, and indeed especially when I've driven somewhere using the phone as a GPS unit. It makes sense that being on a wireless charger and on the dashboard doesn't help, though I do blast the AC against it, so that when I take it off it's actually pretty cool. It takes very little to start heating up though, even if I've just had it in my pocket for an hour after getting out of the car.
I reckon it's probably a matter of waiting for temperatures to come down and possibly iOS being released to see if it keeps doing it. The battery itself appears to be at 85% so I'm still 5% from an on-the-house replacement.

 

[freezy2002]

First of all, sorry for my bad English.

I have similar problems with my 14 Pro. It's enough when I'm using cellular (LTE, good signal) and surfing in Safari or Reddit and the phone gets "very hot". Even before the Instagram heat-bug, it also heated up like crazy when I was using LTE and uploaded a IG story for example.

My 14 Pro performs like a champ and I love it, but it's the worst phone I've ever had when it comes to heat-development. I have to deal with heat especially since iOS 17, but even on iOS 16, I had heat-problems with specific apps, which weren't optimized well.

The good thing is, that I never received a temperature warning or the phone shut down it self. Some days ago, I did some research about temperatures and how they affect the skin when touched. If you iPhone gets hot, but you can still hold it without becoming very uncomfortable, it should still be around 40-45° Celsius which still feels hot but is not harmful to the phone and components. Even at 50° C you can still touch your phone and it doesn't damage your phone immediately.
Only when the iPhone reaches over 50° C does it become dangerous for the components, which is why the iPhone usually switches off to cool down.

Phone processors becoming more and more powerful, which also means they heat up more. Especially in summer this should be more noticeable, the heat-development is also more present since summer on my 14 Pro. I don't know if its a good or bad thing, but I appreciate the performance, even if the heat also bothers me, especially since I use my iPhone without a case.
I just hope that in the future, chip manufacturers or developers find a way that the processors still offer good performance but don't heat up so much.