You Can Officially Protect Your IPhone 15 Pro From Overheating

Whether you purchased it recently or not, you may know that the iPhone 15 Pro has an overheating problem . Between news outlets and social media posts, messages poured in from 15 Pro users and 15 Pro Max users who complained that their new iPhones were too hot to touch. Apple just released an official fix, but there are other ways to lower your phone’s temperature.

Why does iPhone 15 Pro overheat?

These heat spikes are reported to have occurred under a variety of conditions. Some users have noticed this while charging their 15 Pro , while others have found that it generates heat while talking on the phone . Without an official response from Apple, the current theory pointed to a new A17 Bionic chip. Apple’s latest and greatest processor is the most powerful chip the company has ever put in a smartphone—it may have been too powerful. It seemed possible that we were looking at a situation with the 2018 MacBook Pro , where the Intel i9 chip was generating too much heat for the computer’s thin body to dissipate properly.

However, Apple eventually publicly commented on the overheating issue , identifying three main culprits: First, Apple states that the iPhone 15 Pro may overheat during initial setup or after restoring the device because there is an unusual amount of background activity during these periods. This tracks: The device tends to go through more intense periods of activity during initialization because so many processes are happening to bring the device to a stable point. Here’s why you may notice your smartphone’s battery life deteriorating after a big update, and why it evens out after a while.

If your iPhone 15 Pro is experiencing this issue, the overheating should have slowed down after some period of use. However, here this is only a third of the possibilities. The second cause of overheating is a bug in iOS 17 itself. Apple isn’t specific here, but they are blaming a software issue for some of the overheating issues and are promising an update soon to fix it.

The third, however, involves third-party software. Apple says some app updates cause the system to “overload,” which can also lead to overheating. The company specifically mentions Instagram, Uber, and the game Asphalt 9 , but it’s possible that other apps are to blame.

Notably, Apple emphasized that the 15 Pro’s design is not a factor in overheating issues. Some have speculated that the new titanium metal Apple used in the phone is causing the devices to run hotter than they should.

How to fix your iPhone 15 Pro overheating

If you haven’t already, your best bet is to update your iPhone 15 Pro to iOS 17.0.3. On Wednesday, October 4, Apple released a new update that, according to the update notes, “addresses an issue that may cause iPhone to get hotter than expected.”

In case you were wondering, yes: the update does solve the overheating problem. ZDNet took thermal images of its iPhone 15 Pro and 15 Pro Max before and after the update, and temperatures dropped significantly. Before the update, their devices were heating up over 100°F when fast charging, and at one point even reached 107.1°F. However, after the update, phones stuck between 85° and 95° in the hottest spots, which is a big improvement.

Interestingly, iOS 17.0.3 is not only available on the iPhone 15, as the update brings two security patches in addition to an overheating fix. You can update your iPhone to iOS 17.0.3 from Settings > General > Software Update .

However, even after the update, there are other things to consider here. As Apple mentioned, some third-party apps are to blame, particularly updates that are clearly not optimized properly for the iPhone 15 Pro’s A17 chip. So be sure to update your apps frequently: although they update on their own, sometimes it takes a while, so update them manually by clicking on your profile picture in the App Store. You may need to scroll down this page to refresh the list of available app updates.

According to Forbes, Meta has already updated Instagram to address the overheating issue, and other apps are likely not far behind. At this point they may all be updated to resolve this issue. However, I also recommend turning off Background App Refresh for these apps in Settings > General . This will prevent apps like Instagram from running in the background, avoiding potential overheating issues and saving you battery life.

Personally, I disable background app refresh for all apps because I don’t need my apps to dictate when they should receive new data in the background: if I want to update an app, I’ll open it myself, thank you very much. a lot of. If you want to keep this feature enabled but want to know which apps to disable it for, go to Settings > Battery and see which apps are running in the background. Instagram, for example, is likely crunching the numbers when you’re not using it, so turn off background app refreshing permanently.