Turns out it was software all along.
It’s safe to say by this point that the launch of the iPhone 15, especially its Pro variant, has been among the most eventful in recent memory. While it’s not a bad phone by any means, reviewers and early buyers have raised some concerns, especially with the durability of the titanium coating. More recently, reports about the phone overheating have popped up, and Apple is now working on a fix for heat problems.
Apple said that the overheating issues can be pinned down to software, rather than the new titanium build on the iPhone 15 Pro or other hardware problems. According to Apple, overheating issues are caused by a combination of bugs with iOS 17 and bugs with apps, as well as increased background activity during the days following the smartphone’s setup. Nonetheless, these conditions have been identified and Apple says that it will come out with a software update for iPhone 15 Pro users addressing these issues. This wouldn’t be the first early update fixing launch issues with iPhone devices, and even if the update does fix the issue, it shows why maybe buying hardware on launch day isn’t always the best idea.
Previously, there were a myriad of theories regarding why exactly the iPhone 15 Pro was overheating. Many pinned down the issue on the new titanium frame, while others blamed the more powerful A17 Pro chipset, which now comes with more features such as a new GPU with ray tracing capabilities. There might still be some of that at play, especially given how the regular iPhone 15 lacks these issues with theoretically the same software — it has aluminum instead of titanium and an A16 Bionic instead of an A17 Pro. This fix would be looking to mitigate the issues by optimizing the software, but it might not be a full fix since there are issues that can’t be fixed through software. We’ll have to wait and see.
It’s not clear when this will be rolled out, but it should come in the form of an update to iOS 17. Apple says that it’s also working with third-party developers on this, so technically, if there’s any app making the iPhone 15 Pro more prone to overheating, it should also be corrected sooner than later.
