iPhone 12 pro max heating up

I was having the same issue so I did a little research online. Apparently “background refresh” causes overheating. Go to settings > general> background refresh> turn off. When I did this, my phone cooled off almost immediately. Hope this helps!

Thanks! I was thinking that when I first got it. I think it was trying to refresh everything that was on my old phone after I transferred stuff over and I was also have issues with the VPN I was using. When I transferred stuff over from my old phone, it turned on all of the apps to refresh! I did turn off the main app refresh and then also turned off a bunch of apps or deleted them as I don't use them anymore. One way to clean house! I also deleted the VPN and reloaded it, and it seems to be fine now. I have the background app refresh on now, and it doesn't heat up or have any battery issues. In fact to goes for a couple of days now after being totally charged and doesn't get hot, at all. It must have been the new operating system the 12 Pro Max has and getting all my apps up to speed. It must have caught up with everything.

Try to verify in settings -> battery what is consuming too much battery. I had this problem for months until I noticed it was Siri.

I never use Siri, yet Siri was consuming 28% of my battery.

Charging always generates heat. "Fast charging" generates even more.

What many consider "simple browsing" often involves a lot of graphics work, especially if there is video on the page. This requires yet more power if you are doing it via 5G data rather than Wi-Fi.

Mine did the same thing. I think someone else pointed out that the new phone is trying to update a ton of stuff all at once. I went to see what was using the most power and turned off a lot of them. I let the ones that I left open to update and then gradually opened the others. One that was ushering the most power was my VPN so I shut it off. After I did that, everything updated and my phone is now more than perfect. It lasts a couple of days and hasn’t heated up since.

Look at Settings -> Battery and see if it identifies anything as using a lot of battery.

"Basic browsing" can use a lot more CPU than you think it would.

For example "just using Facebook" is one of the more processor-intensive things you can do.

What does Settings -> Battery show?

Turn your phone off and it should cool down within seconds.. There's certain apps you can't be on so long because it will make your phone hot, also make sure you're not on your phone while it is charging.

I MAY BE ABLE TO HELP. I HAVE NOTICED THAT THIS OVERHEATING IS HAPPENING A LOT ON NEW IPHONE 12 PRO MAXS. MINE DID IT THE FIRST NIGHT I BROUGHT MINE HOME. IT GOT EXTREMELY HOT WHILE I WAS BROWSING CNN IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT LAYING IN BED. BURNED MY HAND ACTUALLY AND EVEN THE VOLUME BUTTONS WERE ON FIRE. THEN...AFTER 10 MINUTES OF THAT, THE SCREEN STARTED GOING DARK, AND DARKER AND DARKER. I THOUGHT UH OH, THIS WILL BE GOING BACK IN THE MORNING. BUT I WENT INTO SETTINGS TO DISPLAY AND BRIGHTNESS. I NOTICED THAT MY PHONE HAD BEEN FACTORY SET TO 'NIGHT SHIFT ON'. I CLICKED IT TO 'OFF' AND IMMEDIATELY IT STARTED COOLING OFF, SLOWLY BUT SURELY. THE SCREEN STARTED GOING BACK TO THE NORMAL BRIGHTNESS AND IT'S NEVER DONE IT AGAIN SINCE. I HOPE THIS HELPS! :)

I had the same issue. Turned off the WiFi in my iPhone and this was all solved.

I know, now I use data from my internet and not my WiFi 🙂

Heat when charging (especially when fast charging) is normal; don't worry about it unless it gets hot enough to shut itself down due to temperature.

Ive used apple magsafe ans several mophie/zagg wireless chargers. They all heat up my phone considerably. Ive had older iphones with a mophie juice pack wireless charger and there was never a heating issue. Obviously the heating issue is strictly with the 12 phones. Once a fire starts or phones start getting damaged due to heat the crap is going to hit the fan. Well the civil suits will start, recalls on the phones, and then the phonegate( thats where apple probably knew about this and did nothing) !!!! And then the fall out will truely hit apple in the pocket

My new iPad Pro, 12.9 inch doesn't heat up like my 12Pro Max phone. I did find that I had a virus protection program running in the background, and using 96% of the battery, so I will see if that helps. I turned off almost all my notifications because I noticed that when I transferred stuff over, it reset everything to "on".

Never had any problems with my 8 Plus.

Yes, and for the first 24 - 48 hours after updating iOS or transferring information from an old phone, the phone will do a lot more work than usual as it needs to rebuild all of its internal databases to make the information searchable.

Hi all,

I’ve been through the crucible with Apple on this one. Here’s the rundown.

iPhone 12 Pro Max was hitting temperatures upward of 107° F straight out of the box. Also had really spotty connectivity to wireless chargers, which never was an issue on other devices.

Whether it was running apps, or completely idle on the Home Screen, the phone would become too hot to hold. FaceTime made it worse than any other app.

I contacted Apple straightaway, and they told me I needed to use MagSafe chargers only, which didn’t make a difference, and the same issue happened when charged by cable.

Had to convince three different employees that my phone was heating up — in disbelief, they still made me run diagnostics, told me my phone wasn’t heating up multiple times, while it was too hot to even hold (only way to stop runaway heat up was to hard reset), software up to date... FINALLY sent me a brand new replacement, took a week of shipping but arrived today and I’ve sent off the old one. (Not to mention the $1200 authorization they made in my account until they get the old one back).

First FaceTime call I made on my second 12 pro max, it heated up to 104° F within three minutes, and kept going from there.

Apple needs to fix this problem. The new M1 MacBooks are great, but the phones are garbage they just spat out to have something to sell alongside them. It’s clear where the Cupertino gang put they’re resources this cycle.