Poor Thermal Dissipation & Titanium Frame are to Blame for iPhone 15 Pro’s Heating Issues
People often talk about how Apple rarely makes major changes within the iPhone lineup – well, now we know why. Apple’s design philosophy, whether it be the software or the hardware, has more or less remained the same for the longest time now, and this year, the Cupertinian tech giant decided to switch things up a bit.
Apple went with an unconventional titanium design this time around for the main frame, ditching the stainless steel, apparently for better durability, however it negatively impacted the overall heat dissipation. To create a lighter feel for the phone, it appears that compromises were made within the phone’s internal cooling mechanism.
Furthermore, this has led to the issue of thermal throttling with so much heat generated that only on benchmarking applications, the phone starts to reach an upward of 47C, which for some may be too hot to handle, not to mention how the performance drastically drops due to thermal throttling.
Initially, it was speculated that the thermal throttling and reduced performance had something to do with the substandard chips that TSMC had fabricated, particularly due to excessive leakage of current. Some analysts went as far as to say that TSMC should have switched over from FinFET to GAA earlier. However, this is not the case.
In fact, the issue lies in how the phone is designed internally. The smaller 6.1″ 15 Pro has the same heating problems, with almost identical trends as the larger 6.7″ 15 Pro Max, meaning that adequate cooling wasn’t provided.
In fact, for benchmarking the A17 Pro, you’d need to attach a separate fan to the phone to achieve numbers that show actual performance improvements over the A16 Bionic. While it is possible that Apple may address these issues with some form of a software update, it will most likely come at a cost in terms of performance.
It remains to be seen what Apple will make of all this. After all, the iPhone is the best-selling phone in this market, and they must have a plan to address these issues.
This is all we know for now, but rest assured that we will keep you updated as new information becomes available.
via: Ming-Chi Kuo
