Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

iPhone 15: users of Pro and Pro Max models complain of overheating issues

theguardian.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 200 posts

Re: iPhone 15: users of Pro and Pro Max models complain of overheating issues

#21

Post by A_D_E_P_T »

I can't say to what extent this is a real problem, but I can note that titanium has exceptionally poor thermal conductivity.

Ti 6-4: 6.7 W/(m·K)

Stainless steel (18-8): ~16.5 W/(m·K)

Aluminum 6061-T6: >150 W/(m·K)

As engineering alloys go, in general, titanium is at the bottom of the pack for thermal conductivity. It's possible that this might make the body of the phone a poor heatsink and lead to localized hot spots.

I'd think that the engineers at Apple have compensated for this, though. A thin internal copper or aluminum heatsink would be more than enough. But it's interesting that this titanium phone is experiencing thermal problems -- because that's the one problem you'd really expect to see with a titanium-bodied electronic device.

Re: iPhone 15: users of Pro and Pro Max models complain of overheating issues

#22

Post by brookst »

haswell wrote: post #20

I wonder how much of this is just caused by the higher workloads people put on their new phones just after purchase: restoring from backup, installing/trying new apps, testing out that new GPU, Photos doing a new classification pass on the existing library, and just a generally higher than average workload for the first few weeks of ownership. It seems like there are always a flurry of reports of issues like this on…

Possibly that, possibly that any headline about the new phones is guaranteed clicks.

IIRC the original article about this cited case temperatures of 116f in some areas during intense benchmarking.

Re: iPhone 15: users of Pro and Pro Max models complain of overheating issues

#25

Post by sod »

If iOS wasn't just a baby OS but instead had an activity monitor, we wouldn't play scavenger hunt, but instead just see "oh, this app or process is pinned to 100% for 5 minutes, please fix the app or apple please throttle a simple picture viewing app like instagram before it turned my brick into a stovetop". I guess we have to wait until daddy apple with their full system access can reproduce it and fix in 17.1

Re: iPhone 15: users of Pro and Pro Max models complain of overheating issues

#27

Post by scblock »

A_D_E_P_T wrote: post #21

I can't say to what extent this is a real problem, but I can note that titanium has exceptionally poor thermal conductivity. Ti 6-4: 6.7 W/(m·K) Stainless steel (18-8): ~16.5 W/(m·K) Aluminum 6061-T6: >150 W/(m·K) As engineering alloys go, in general, titanium is at the bottom of the pack for thermal conductivity. It's possible that this might make the body of the phone a poor heatsink and lead to localized hot spots…

This is irrelevant since the majority of the internal frame is aluminum. It's really just the outer portion that you hold that is titanium.

Re: iPhone 15: users of Pro and Pro Max models complain of overheating issues

#28

Post by vlovich123 »

sod wrote: post #25

If iOS wasn't just a baby OS but instead had an activity monitor, we wouldn't play scavenger hunt, but instead just see "oh, this app or process is pinned to 100% for 5 minutes, please fix the app or apple please throttle a simple picture viewing app like instagram before it turned my brick into a stovetop". I guess we have to wait until daddy apple with their full system access can reproduce it and fix in 17.1

First of all, the phone does tell you which process is responsible for burning energy. It’s not necessarily the best but it’s there. If the phone is getting too hot to hold though, it’s not a software bug of something pinning the CPU. The OS should be thermal throttling well before that happens, and I’ve seen that happen on hot days (the phone goes from thermal throttling the CPU to a perma “this phone is too hot” blocked state until it’s cool enough). This sounds like the issue has to do with the new titanium casting that transfers heat differently and maybe isn’t tuned properly for their throttling? Not sure.

Re: iPhone 15: users of Pro and Pro Max models complain of overheating issues

#29

Post by [deleted] »

naravara wrote: post #7
dna_polymerase wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Warm, rather unpleasantly (but not concerningly) - sure, but hot - never. If only we had a standardized scale to measure and express warm vs. cold…

The problem is that the temperature you feel on your hand is not necessarily the temperature the chip is operating under. If your hand is warm that, ironically, means the heat is dissipating effectively. If it's not dissipating, then your hand will remain cool because all the heat is still on the chip. So unless Apple gives you a way to read the chip's own temperature sensor data, what you feel holding it isn't that…

[deleted]

Re: iPhone 15: users of Pro and Pro Max models complain of overheating issues

#30

Post by appleskeptic »

woah wrote: post #26

Why is weight even a concern? Thinness I get because that makes a real difference in your pocket, but what's the point of reducing the weight a tiny bit?

To be fair, some ways of holding the weight of the phone in one hand, e.g. resting the weight on your pinky finger along bottom edge, can cause hand injury/RSI. So weight isn’t a totally solved problem.
Post reply on HN