New «space-age» titanium iPhone 15 overheats, customers complain

Apple's iPhone 15 Pro starts at £999. Photo: PATRICK T. FALLON

Thousands of Apple customers are complaining that their «aerospace-grade» titanium-coated iPhone 15 Pro phones are overheating just days after purchasing them.

Apple iPhone 15 Pro customers starting at from £999, and the larger iPhone 15 Pro Max, which costs £1,119, have complained on customer forums, Twitter and Reddit that the devices get too hot to hold during video calls, gaming or listening to music.< /p>

In a post that received more than 2,000 likes on Apple's customer forum, one customer wrote: «I recently bought a new iPhone 15 Pro Max and it gets warm even when I'm not using it.»

Max Weinbach, a technology analyst at Creative Strategies, tweeted that his iPhone 15 Pro Max is «too hot to hold while charging.»

Ming-Chi Kuo, an Apple analyst at TF International Securities, said the overheating problem could be partly related to the company's decision to use titanium for the new phone's body.

Mr Kuo said the use of metal was one of the factors that «negatively affects thermal efficiency.»

Apple has made titanium a key selling point of its new devices, touting it as «the same alloy that is used in space the ships are used for flights to Mars.”

iPhone 15 pricing

Jeff Fieldhack, director of Counterpoint Research, said the «new aesthetic updates» have created «more incentive for users to upgrade this year.»

The overheating complaints are an unfortunate setback for the smartphone giant. The newly launched iPhones feature the company's most powerful processors and cameras yet.

Mr Kuo said designers may also have made «compromises… in thermal design to achieve a lighter weight» of the device.

Some phone reviewers have specifically expressed concerns about the phone's durability, with one YouTube reviewer breaking the glass body of the iPhone 15 Pro Max with his bare hands.

Apple's customer support page says its phones «may become warm» when they are first set up, using wireless charging or playing graphics-intensive games. Apple declined to comment.

Mr Kuo said Apple may release a software update to mitigate the overheating problem by changing the way the phone operates and therefore the amount of heat it generates.

He said the problem is not related to the phone's new microchip, which is smaller and more powerful than the microchip in previous models.

In addition, Apple chief executive Tim Cook was in London on Thursday, visiting the company's recently opened London headquarters at Battersea Power Station during a tour of Europe.

Apple said the office will house its «growing team» in the UK, where it currently has a total of 8,000 employees.

Mr Cook told the Press Association that the UK economy was “more vibrant than ever” for smartphone app development, adding that it was hiring local artificial intelligence experts.