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iPhone 15 Pro Max Thermalgate (yup, it's happening): Pics of how you're coping
- Thread starter bmustaf
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Who says we have significantly more heat to deal with than previous phones? I just ran the 3D Mark Wildlife Extreme 20 run stress test on my 14PM and 15PM max and neither really heated up more than the other.
It's well within spec. On the very, very rare occasion that the phone has to do more than just throttle itself, it will dim the screen, pause charging, and in even more rare cases shut itself down. That's not an "over powered" device, that's just a fanless device.
It is certainly overpowered. We don't need a PS5-lite performance in our pocket, the Nintendo Switch did just fine in 2017 when it barely met the PS4 standards at the time. Switch is due for an update but it showed you don't need to go all crazy with the performance to get some decent use out of it.
You seem to be misunderstanding me as much as possible. I am not giving you an exhaustive list of what is and isn't a "current phone", I simply gave you a shortlist of current phones I have personal experience with running games and benchmarks on and using as daily drivers, that I can personally attest to the behaviour of.
Who says the iPhone 15 Pro Max is "overheating"? Overheating would imply the phone is actually shutting itself down due to heat, which isn't happening.
Why are you grousing about this exactly? You wanted an example of how to make the iPhone dim its screen and/or pause charging through legitimate usage, and I gave you one. You could just charge an iPad while sunlight is shining on it through the window and the auto brightness has kicked the screen up to max brightness, and it will pause charging from the heat. I ran into that scenario myself. I'm not going to sit here all day coming up with more scenarios - use your imagination.
I think you're confused about your whole point. When deliberately pushing the chips to the maximum, the 14PM and 15PM don't behave that differently, so remind me how this is a hardware issue? Bugs in software don't always impact all users.
It's certainly overpowered because you say it is?
Why wouldn't we want that kind of performance in our pocket? Clearly that kind of performance is attainable without the phone running into thermal issues that other phones don't run into, or suffering from battery issues other phones don't suffer from. You'll find the sustained performance under load is significantly less powerful than PS5-lite anyway, just because of the lack of cooling. The iPhone 15 Pro under sustained load in gaming is probably around the Steam Deck level just because it's operating in such a thermally constrained package.
ie, the phone will throttle down to a sustainable level of performance anyway, at industry leading efficiency, so what's the problem?
Haven’t felt my 15 Pro Max get warm once. Honestly. I wonder if it’s defective SoCs or something…
It’s weird, my 15 pro max got blazing hot Friday night when it was restoring, it’s gotten a little warm since then but nothing worse than my 14pm ever did.
Mine gets hot during CarPlay mirroring, to the point that Maps animations drop to like 1 frame per second. So I should just stop using CarPlay?
Did you restore from backup or started from scratch? Mine is burning during call of more than 10 mins.
There is a difference. Some people used a thermal camera under gaming and you could see that the heat doesn’t spread as well on the iPhone 15 Pro Max. So the cooling on the iPhone 15 Pro Max is worse.
Also benchmarks have shown that the iPhone 15 Pro Max throttles so hard, that it basically have the same performance as the iPhone 14 Pro Max when gaming. The 25% increased GPU power is something you enjoy only temporary until it starts throttling down.
Apple needs to return to Aluminium and focus on better cooling for the upcoming iPhone 16 Pro Max, because the A17 Pro chip seems a bit of a waste in the iPhone 15 Pro Max.
I am wondering if the titanium itself doesn't allow the heat to dissipate as well or allow the phone to stay as cool while charging? (Please jump in if you're an engineer!) I have had it happen on my 14Pro (not Max) when driving a long distance and using the Travel App continuously for gps. Since the phone runs down quickly with continuous use of the Travel App, and am generally listening to podcasts alongside, I keep the phone plugged into the charger on long trips. In these situations, the 14Pro has shut down until cool again, usually 15-20 minutes.
Does the 15/15Max have a similar pattern of shutting down during heavy use or is it more frequent/worse than your experience with the 14 Pro? Shutting down until cool does seem to be "a thing" that happens, but would like to know if there is a change in frequency or recovery duration with the newer 15Pro/Max. Surely Apple has done comparison studies in their labs with the different materials and under different usage patterns and with different batteries and even the type of charger. If Apple has done those experiments, please tell us where we can see that data/study.
It would be really helpful to consumers to know how they can avoid their phones incapacity due to overheating, e.g., use Travel app alone and don't listen to podcasts/music at the same time. Even if it's standard across the industry there could be serious problems in some circumstances, like an emergency requiring the phone gps after an accident, during a riot, during the commission of a crime, or expecting a really important call about a job or elderly parent who is ill. Knowing how to keep the phone from overheating during use could allow us to act accordingly when we know we might need to be reached at a particular time. As I have an Apple Watch, I can use that for Navigation, but many people don't have anything else to use when traveling in dangerous or isolated areas. Knowing how to take precautions against losing the phone for even 30 minutes could save some lives Apple should address and publicize this issue as a relevant contribution to Public Safety
Does the 15/15Max have a similar pattern of shutting down during heavy use or is it more frequent/worse than your experience with the 14 Pro? Shutting down until cool does seem to be "a thing" that happens, but would like to know if there is a change in frequency or recovery duration with the newer 15Pro/Max. Surely Apple has done comparison studies in their labs with the different materials and under different usage patterns and with different batteries and even the type of charger. If Apple has done those experiments, please tell us where we can see that data/study.
It would be really helpful to consumers to know how they can avoid their phones incapacity due to overheating, e.g., use Travel app alone and don't listen to podcasts/music at the same time. Even if it's standard across the industry there could be serious problems in some circumstances, like an emergency requiring the phone gps after an accident, during a riot, during the commission of a crime, or expecting a really important call about a job or elderly parent who is ill. Knowing how to keep the phone from overheating during use could allow us to act accordingly when we know we might need to be reached at a particular time. As I have an Apple Watch, I can use that for Navigation, but many people don't have anything else to use when traveling in dangerous or isolated areas. Knowing how to take precautions against losing the phone for even 30 minutes could save some lives Apple should address and publicize this issue as a relevant contribution to Public Safety
Because putting ‘Gate ‘ in the name will triple your click rate.
Allow me to demonstrate:
DILDOGATE IS REAL!
If it’s already throttling / throwing warnings / getting too hot to hold when all people are doing are simple setups or data transfers, then there is no way this will have steam deck performance under load when doing something as intensive as gaming.
Cooling fans still exist today for a reason.. apple seems to be trying to invent their own laws of physics sometimes.
Big if. The majority of people aren't running into this problem at all, so it seems to be either a software/firmware issue or at the very worst a quality control issue.
Why is there no way? The A17 Pro is pretty close to the M1, and the M1 is far more powerful than the Steam Deck. Even if the A17 Pro throttles heavily (which it does), doesn't mean it will throttle to below the Steam Deck's performance. The chip is better, and far more expensive. I'd guess the A17 Pro in an iPhone throttles to a smidge below the Steam Deck's gaming performance for the most part, and the M1 in an iPad throttles down to a level that still outperforms the Steam Deck.
You want Apple to put a cooling fan in a phone? The iPhone 15 Pro is vastly more powerful than a Nintendo Switch even when fully throttled, and the Switch runs plenty of games. Why not run some games on the iPhone if it's powerful enough (which it is).
An alarming number of people really need to understand that a phone that is under thermal load isn't overheating, and just because something throttles, doesn't always mean it's throttling down to a lower level of performance than something else that has active cooling.
Wasn't able to add the link for some reason but there is an article about this on 9to5mac today. Suggesting the Sim card tray could be a cause? Would be interesting to see if the majority of those experiencing this issue has a physical Sim card or eSim
While the OP jokes… last year I had to use ice packs with my 14P to prevent screen dimming
This year my 15PM runs cool as a cucumber. Seems like it’s a software issue for the those having problems.
This year my 15PM runs cool as a cucumber. Seems like it’s a software issue for the those having problems.
If you'd actually read my post you'd have seen that I did say it might be a batch of faulty components. However, I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that you have no actual evidence for any of what you wrote.
Nobody does - for sure, and Apple won’t tell us. I’m just laying out a senario where you can design a product to work perfectly and then have a supplier mess up and scuttle everything. Here is where things become involved for Apple. If it was lower grade chips then ideally you should just delay the launch of the pros - but if you decide to go ahead with the substandard chips then it all on Apple now and not the supplier.
There is some evidence on the chips but I’m too wacked out from oral surgery to find it. It doesn’t matter anyway, the product is already released…
Do you think Apple will address this issue or just quietly push an update to down clock the cpu?
I'm in EU with a simtray 15PM and I don't seem to experience overheating. I played Genshin Impact and the phone was barely warm. It gets warmer when I'm charging it but I'm using the 20W charger because I lack a cable with a usb-c port thin enough to enter the fine woven case. I plan on going back using the old trusty gentle 5W charger I used with my 13P. It also preserved the battery health so much.
It's better they act quickly; the return window for most will be next week. If the problem is not fixed I will return it to Apple and get a regular 15 with the old processor.
In the meantime activating the low power mode seems to have mitigated the problem.
For anyone interested, this is the predicament TSMC found itself in making chips for Apple:
TSMC 3nm chip production can't keep up with Apple demand
TSMC 3nm chip production is well underway, with the latest process expected to be used for both the A17 chip...
9to5mac.com
This is sort of a recipe for disaster with a sole supplier trying to deal with Apples’s demands on cutting edge tech. This is an old news story but initial production began long ago.