Apple has acknowledged user complaints that iPhone 15 and 15 Pro phones are overheating, reports Forbes, but said that contrary to speculation, it has nothing to do with the phone’s hardware design. Forbes noted an update to Instagram has already rolled out with version 302, released September 27th, to address some of the issues.
“Ew, you ran an APP on it? No wonder it over heated”
Ugh you ran OUR firmware on it? Well that shits too buggy
The article does a shit job of explaining why certain apps are a problem.
These are apps that have not been updated to play nice with iOS 17. And in the case of the biggest offender, Instagram, there are people in Apple forums reporting overheating issues with iOS 17 Instagram for 5 months.
Meta was incompetent. This bug is easy AF to reproduce. I find it hard to believe that no one at IG was running a dev beta or public beta. Every other phone in the valley is running these damn betas. Somehow they did not prioritize compatibility work for the latest yearly major release.
These betas and SDKs are provided 5-6 months before major OS releases. WWDC betas and the final release drop around the same time every year. This is like meta being surprised that Christmas came around at the end of December.
What exactly are these apps doing that can cause the phone to overheat?
Good question. Hopefully we’ll get some insight in update release notes for these apps. Although, Instagram’s patch release notes today were “bug fixes and performance improvements.” Five words. No more details.
We can never know exactly. For me I always think about the (incidental) complexity of these huge apps like Instagram.
Somebody mentioned the phone overheating when watching Reels - those short videos. Here’s a made-up example (but I’ve written some software for video streaming services)…
Those videos are pretty short, and some people skip the clip even after less than 1 second. Instagram want that next video to be playing instantly (gotta get that dopamine hit ASAP!). A strategy you could take is have the app load the next, say, 5 possible videos in the background before you’ve even seen them. When the user swipes, that video is already playing. To make this even faster we could execute some recommendation decisions on-device rather than on some servers (over a relatively much slower 4G connection).
With all this complexity comes greater chance of some unexpected behaviour. Instead of loading 5 videos, maybe we accidentally load 100 and never clean up the old ones. Maybe after an OS update we need to change the way we mark a task as low priority.
I can imagine it’s a collection of bugs where it’s sorta the OS’ problem but sorta the application’s problem. It probably reached a stalemate. Nobody really wanted to spend the extra engineering effort; maybe it would all have to be undone then rewritten again to get something out in time.
Maybe. As a developer I’ve found Apple reasonably accessible and cooperative if you find issues with new flagship products or features they’re developing.
If it’s really important, and you have a nice app or something prominent in a category, it’s not hard to get on calls with them, or get a meeting at their campus to talk shop on a solution. I’ve been able to, and the apps that I have in the store are by no means Instagram-level popular.
Cool insight - thanks! All points even more to bad planning by the Instagram team as you said originally.
I guess I wouldn’t be particularly surprised. Apple put shitloads of R&D into power-efficiency. Can’t imagine the culture at Instagram/Meta is like that.
I only ever received pushback and scepticism when uploading or updating my apps. Even with detailed instructions and clear explanations they always found some arbitrary way to deny the release or update. Only to walk it back later in the appeal process after you corrected them on the reasons they gave.
Even personal appeal over email/ phone was a mess, that were so secretive about the app reviewers that I can’t imagine strolling over to the campus and collaborating with them.
I’ve definitely received my fair share of bullshit from stupid reviewers. That said, when your company size or ranking in the App Store reaches a certain point, or your app is using some new parts of the SDK that they want to show off, then they AppStore marketing managers take your calls. The marketing folks can then help to coordinate meetings with their engineers.
The apps I work on are not as popular as Instagram, but I do work for a fortune 50 company, so they respond to my emails or iMessages. And if they respond to my janky ass, Meta can DEFINITELY get them on the horn.
Hey, that’s some cool insight! Thanks!
It’s like the thing where PCs work a lot better if you don’t install any applications.
2023 version of Jobs’ “You’re holding it wrong”
How is it that? It looks the main issue is a patchable OS bug that will be addressed in 17.1, or sooner.
It’s unlikely to be a hardware design flaw. It seems to be sporadic, and hit both the new enclosure materials and CPU, as well as the 15’s with the last generation CPU and old aluminum enclosure.
I’m well aware of the reference.
My point is that, unlike the iPhone 4, this likely isn’t a silicon or enclosure issue. If it was, it wouldn’t be hitting the old repurposed last gen stuff too. We’re also getting reports of apps in iOS 17 heating up older devices and iPads. It’s the new OS, SDKs, and certain apps that haven’t been updated for iOS 17.
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Looks like it’s an OS bug that is causing some processes to cycle over and over and over. Looks like it’s just a bug fix and making sure 3rd parties have properly updated for iOS 17.
This is almost certainly an iOS 17 issue, and it looks like it’s going to be patched soon.
Blaming the titanium doesn’t make sense. People are also reporting the issue on the iPhone 15 models that are all aluminum and are running an iteration of the old A16.
This will be a non issue in a few days.
Edit: People are also reporting that these apps heat up the logic board of older hardware, iPads, etc. This looks like a good old fashioned case of a bugs in a new n.0 OS and apps that have not been updated to run smoothly in a new OS.
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The iPhone 15 base models are still Aluminum. Also the iPhone 15 pro models are only titanium on the sides (all the way around the phone). The chassis is still Aluminum and the back is still glass.
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Maybe, but I liked that you found the thermal conductivity for the different materials. I hadn’t even considered that it probably wasn’t the titanium until I started thinking about how those numbers for stainless and titanium were pretty close!
The Ti in the new pros is just a band around some aluminum, and this issue is being reproduces on the aluminum phones, old stainless steel phones, iPads, etc.
All signs are starting to point to software now.
We have people on YouTube reproducing these thermal issues or iOS 17 and iPad OS 17 devices. The new aluminum phones, old stainless phones, iPads, etc.
There are clearly issues with iOS 17 and some apps that needed to be updated to play nice with the new OS.
A lot of people are experiencing this because Instagram is one of the apps that was heating up logic boards with iOS 17. And in the case of the Insta example, Instagram should’ve caught this earlier. Meta clearly fucked up. People have been reporting this bug in the betas for months, it’s easy to reproduce, and they should know that auto update is aggressive AF on iOS
“It’s not our fault, it’s theirs!”
points to self
Spider-men.jpg
iPhone runs like a newly installed stove, and Android refuses to dial 911…
Wonderful world we’re all living in…
They should have noticed it with QC terrible excuse
Consumers are Beta testers now
Yeah, let’s be real. It’s something that isn’t impacting most people, a lot of folks in the various Apple forums can’t reproduce it, and it’s going to be patched shortly.
Of the stupid shit Apple has done, this is pretty low on the totem poll.
Didn’t they blame tight pants for the 6 bending?
I had a 6, and that bending thing was entirely blown out of proportion. I had no problems keeping it in my back pocket, yet YMMV.
I love people putting out the “everyone is wrong because I didn’t have a problem” response like there weren’t tens of millions of devices sold.
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I watched multiple tech reviews bend the thing in their bare hands. Just because you didn’t damage yours doesn’t mean it wasn’t a huge issue
It was really the 6 plus that had banking problems. Was your a plus or regular?
I only have a 13, but iOS 17 was the buggiest OS drop I can remember.
Instagram uploading as much data on you as possible, while downloading as many ads as possible
Well they’re not wrong; Ive got an Xr and a 13Pro on 17, and they both ran hot for the first two versions. And I don’t even have Instagram installed….
The official Reddit app launched an update that did this to my then-few months old iPhone 12 Pro Max back in early 2021. Switching to Apollo immediately fixed the problem.
And now here we are. No problems since then, but TBF I haven’t used any other terrible apps that sloppily force as many ads through my phone as fast as possible.
Apple might actually have a point here.
That implies a problem with Apple’s scheduler and/or thermal management
The kernel should never allow a user space processes to overheat the hardware
Fight! Fight! Fight!
