Early iPhone 15 tests after overheat-fixing patch don't show any performance losses
Initial testing of the iOS 17.0.3 update demonstrates that Apple managed to reduce heat in the iPhone 15 without impacting performance at all.
iPhone 15 Pro Max Geekbench benchmarks after the iOS 17.0.3 patch applied
Early iPhone 15 hands-on experiences were strange to read, with a clear dichotomy. In those accounts, some phones were getting very hot, and some weren't. Reliable data on this was obscured somewhat by phones indexing after data transfer or OS update, which just complicated assessment.
As the days wore on, it was clear that not every user was complaining about heat, nor was it a majority of iPhone 15 users. There were some, and we had a brief bout of it with one of our staffers early -- but that case cleared up.
But social media hammered on with the idea, picked up and amplified by the tribal nature of the internet.
Apple waited until September 30 to say something about it. At the time, they blamed the heating on Instagram and other apps, in conjunction with a bug in iOS 17.0.2 that was aggravating the issue.
And they promised a patch to iOS to deal with the issue. That update arrived on Wednedsday afternoon.
In the hour and a half that the update has been available, we've updated a few of our iPhones with the patch and re-ran benchmarking we relied upon in some of our reviews.
We ran every benchmark we did in the reviews several times across multiple runs and users. In every case, we got what we saw in the studies, with little or no variance.
If you hammer any computing device or charge a battery, it will get hot. Physics and chemistry are inescapable. We believe the iPhone could have better cooling systems for longer-term performance, but that's neither here nor there today.
Ultimately, time will tell on this, and I'm sure there will be outlier experiences and applications, as benchmarking isn't the universal end-all of performance testing. But today, initial testing with a wide net shows no significant performance issues induced by the patch.
Read on AppleInsider
Comments
There's an iOS/iPadOS app called "System Status Pro: hw monitor" that provides a CPU Usage gauge and the average load over the past 1, 5, and 15 minutes. It would be interesting to see the before and after numbers when the heating issue is occurring during the before period samples. If your iPhone or iPad gets sluggish or unresponsive I suppose this will confirm that the device may be heavily loaded so you could perhaps close some apps to make things better. Unfortunately, that's the full extent of the loading metrics available. No list of running processes, threads, CPU per process, etc., so you won't really know which app or system process could be contributing to the loading.
[Edit: the app does provide other useful metrics and detailed system information]
Now that this issue appears to be resolved, I suspect that nobody in the user community really cares to know about the root cause of this issue. Time to move on and wait for the next social media amplified panic alarm to go off. The sky has been restored to its proper location.
iPhone 15 Pro 256GB
'Case' or 'no case'? is a more difficult quagmire. If you want maximum performance and minimum weight it is certainly 'no case'. Those more bothered by resale price in a year or two than blazing performance may be tempted to go with a 'case' to preserve the pristine appearance. However, beauty may only be skin-deep but health certainly isn't. Heat ages batteries badly so those 'case' people may find their battery's heath deteriorating prematurely c.f. 'no case' and therefore negatively affecting the resale price.
Perhaps keep it in the original sealed box to maximise resale value?
it may be remembered that the Messenger app from Facebook caused hearing and battery drain as well, and Chrome, under some circumstances can drain the battery and cause heating. This happens to Android phones as well, but nobody seems to care enough to make it out like a world ending issue as they do when it’s something that affects Apple.
He was, himself, a problem. Remember he was responsible for the maps debacle. He was fired because he refused to sign the letter of apology that the other top Apple executives signed. Apparently he either knew there was a problem and hid it, or didn’t know enough about what was going on in his own department to know there was a major problem. Both are unforgivable.
Don’t worry about it.
I've had that happen sporadically since iOS 16 on my 14 Pro Max, it usually appears vertically along the left-hand side of my device. Reboot usually clears it up (but only temporarily).
Don't they test these phones before mass production starts ?
I mean Instagram is common enough that anyone testing a phone probably has it
this wasn't some unknown app that's rarely installed
that is why we have quality control
to find out these issues before the phone is produced and you have tons of negative press
i have a lot of people at work that got it and the heat buildup was pretty common
I'd say 40%
Sucks even more when you just (over)paid $1200 for a phone and you have issues
Samsung and Google are quite aways back if you can believe this Mobile Benchmark list from geek bench. (Notice where the iPhone 11 Pro six cores is rated in relationship to Samsung and Google latest smartphones eight cores. (Nearly five years back that can’t be right)
In short if Apple has to massage the wattage/heat envelope, they appear to have a very large window to work with?
https://www.phonearena.com/news/facebook-drains-phone-batteries-intentionally_id145227 Related (Meta)
However I agree there are many small glitches that remain unaddressed. For example sometimes the volume bar sometimes renders for a landscape design while being in portrait after switching back and forth. It rarely happens but when it does it looks so ugly :-)
Which issues do have?