iPhone 15 Pro Max Heating & Battery Draining Fast

My iPhone 15 Pro Max also seems to have a massive battery drain problem. I use my phone constantly at work and my 14 Pro Max always lasted all day and all evening. Seriously, I had to charge before bed maybe 2 times all year. My 15 Pro Max plummeted over 60% in 3 hours this morning.

Same. Really have no ide what’s happening! I charged it up before bed, unplugged it, was at 98, dropped to 90 this morning and now 43% after one hour of wave navigation and Spotify. My 12s battery was better than this. 😭

I Have made many changes in my settings to screen including turning on low power mode. It still drains the battery much more quickly than my old eleven!

waiting to hear some good news. Regretting the prompt purchase of this phone!

There’s at least three problems that they know about if you bring the phone to Apple they’re gonna act like they don’t know anything one of the text came up to me and said it’s going to need another update or two… also some of the phones after three days the battery gets used to the charging and it stops getting warm while charging which mine has done but at eight 8 o’clock in the morning my phone is at 100% for my iPhone 15 Pro Max and by 12 in the afternoon I’m down to 69% and by 5 o’clock I’m at 40 my 14 Pro Max hundred percent at 8 AM all day long at 9 PM it would be on 50%… I can almost guarantee that when they start making the phones for the next batch, some of the problems gets fixed, this is what happens when we all buy the first ones. I should’ve waited till the end of November.

I am no expert but I am inclined to say it’s an iOS 17 bug

I was running iOS 17 public beta on my main phone since #1 (iPhone 14 Pro) while the software was one of the least buggy I’ve ever used. The battery life was abysmal. It never improved even up to the RC.

Setup my iPhone 15 Pro on the 22nd and battery life was still shocking. Went through my app refresh and location service turning a majority off with no improvement.

I decided to do a full reset of my 15 Pro and set it up as new phone instead of restoring my backup incase there was a bug carrying through from that.

Absolutely no improvement with the battery life. Perhaps even marginally worse. Battery usage screen seems to be all over the place.

IOS 17.1 Dev Beta doesn’t make any mention of battery improvements

I got my 15 pro max on 9/26 yesterday it arrived. It came from Canada for some reason not even the main warehouse and I have noticed the warmth too it’s not like it’s so hot it’ll burn you but it stays hot while I did my first charge however after I let the battery die and the phone sit for 5 minutes and charged it up it was not warm and it charged up to 100% in like 1 hour my phone lasts very long too and I’m constantly on TikTok watching and uploading videos 24/7 my phone was at 50 percent when I turned it on it lasted me like all day I don’t sit on the phone talking all day or face timing so I can’t really attest to that but I can tell you I watch videos more than anybody I know and I went from 100% around 8am to 90% by almost 11am idk if that’s good or not and that’s watching TikTok videos for 3 hours too I’ll keep an eye on everything

So, here I am, with a $1200 pocket heater.

I've been troubleshooting this for two days straight now. I realise that for a new phone the first few days battery usage is high(er) than normal because of the backup being restored in the background, re-indexing stuff and whatnot. But that has never lasted more than a day or two and in 12-ish hours I've had this phone for a week.

Turned off Always On, uninstalled a suspect app that doesn't seem it actually caused it because the drain is still the same, restarted several times... And I, too, refuse to use LPM for this problem.

I've had my $1200 phone for a week and haven't enjoyed it at all. And I've been a iPhone user since the iPhone 3 and always enjoyed it. Apple better fix this FAST.

Anyone have better or same results???

I think - maaaaybe - the overheating is a little less, but the battery drain is unchanged for 17.0.3. I just tried draining the battery entirely, as suggested, until the phone shut off and I literally just plugged in into the charger for a full night charging session. Honestly, I don't have much hope. I'll see how bad the drain is tomorrow. If it's unchanged my next step will be factory reset + restore backup. If that doesn't work I'm contacting Apple and will have them swap it for another.

It just sucks. Have a new, expensive, gadget and I'm actually actively avoiding using it because I won't make it to the end of the day... 😫

Ok, I apologise for hijacking this thread and making it my personal echochamber / diary but I do have an update.

This afternoon, around 15:00, I factory reset my 15 Pro Max and put it in it's original packaging. When I arrived home from work I took it out and noticed it still being warm as described in my previous post. This was the battery level at 18:21:

And temperature, after sitting in a box doing literally nothing:

I then put it back in it's packaging. It's now 8 hours later (2:30) and this is it's battery:

It's also still (abnormally, not uncomfortably, but noticably) warm. This 100% rules out any issues in my settings or profile. This phone is absolutely, most definitely, a lemon. Let's hope my replacement is better! 🤞

Meanwhile, back on my (2 year old, daily used!) 13 Pro Max:

This is funny to me; as you can see in the activity graph it was restoring the backup from around 14:00-ish to 16:00-ish and, while higher battery usage is expected after restoring from a backup for -up to!- a week battery life was better immediately (see all screenshots I've posted previously). The graph seems to be almost flat and this time I didn't even avoid using my phone! It still didn't see very much usage, but I'm not that heavy of a user anyway. This is, again, even more proof that, at least my particular phone, is a lemon. Especially since I'm running off the exact same backup as the 15 Pro Max did.

Good luck for everyone still struggling with their phones! I hope you find your solutions soon and get to enjoy your (expensive!) gadgets soon again!

Ok, update time. And this will be the final update from me.

Spoiler alert: I'm happy again.

Last Tuesday my phone was picked up by UPS. Wednesday I got a notification from Apple that my phone was received AND that a new phone was already on it's way. I was told this could take up to 2 weeks or so but I guess that was an underpromise (which is a good thing; underpromise, overdeliver). And yesterday, Thursday, my new iPhone 15 Pro Max 256GB natural arrived. I unpacked it and started restoring from backup. First thing I noticed is that the phone, even though it still had to update to 17.0.3 (it was on 17.0.2), never got anywhere near as warm (or hot) as the previous one did. Yes, it did get warmer than ambient but that's normal, it's doing work afterall. At that time I was already convinced this phone was better than the other. I tried temper my excitement, you never know what interaction of apps may cause it to start heating up again and draining battery, so I wanted to make sure everything settled first.

My phone has now been restored for around 18 hours or so and the difference with the replaced one is night and day. If you look at the battery drain screenshots I posted earlier in this thread (one, two and three) which I later compared to my old iPhone 13 Pro Max (here) and compare that to my current battery usage graph I think you'll agree that this phone is much, MUCH better:

The battery drain on this replaced iPhone 15 Pro Max may be sliiiiightly higher still than my old 13 Pro Max but I do have the always-on enabled (hey, I couldn't resist, it's a new phone and I'm eager to use it's new touted features 😉) so the comparison isn't 100% fair. However, it sure does look like I'll be able to use my phone for (close to, or maybe even a little over) two days on a single charge instead of it not even lasting 18.

The experience with returning it was frustrating, I felt I wasn't actually heard by Apple, I didn't feel appreciated as a customer (spending quite a large amount of money) so I do think Apple should work on that. However, Apple did come thru in the end. My replacement arrived (much) earlier than expected and the replacement seems to be fine 🤞. I'm a happy camper again. Thank you Apple 👍

Is this specific enough? Idk sorry if it isnt.

Is the green graph something specific to the Pro Max or something? Why do I have a green graph and you don't?

It's this part I'm interested in. That's what visualized the drain best for me.

That 2/3hours screentime and battery going from 100% to 40%

In those same 2/3 hours? If that's the case then you're phone is most likely faulty. That's what the green battery level graph should show with a steep slope (see later in this post).

Yea i tried already much things

And other things that can use alot of battery

You'll need to be more specific ;-)

posted screenshot above this

Don't make me/us go scour this thread and hunt for your screenshot you're referring to, give me/us links ;-) The little chain in the bottom right corner of each post is a direct link to a post. Link your texts to the posts you're referring to. Anyway: In that specific post the green graph (battery level) is missing. This is the graph I used the most to see if something I changed made a difference. The "slope" of the graph tells a lot.

Getting warm while charging is normal, that’s true of every rechargeable battery.

As for battery life, there are two big components: third-party apps and cell signal strength.

Check the statistics under Settings -> Battery to see whether a third party app is using a lot of power.

Check the iPhone battery health and usage - Apple Support

Is your cell signal strength low? If you only have one bar it will use a lot more power than if you have full bars.

Also, 5G cellular uses more power than LTE, and your iPhone 7 did not support 5G.

Use 5G with your iPhone - Apple Support

Finally, when first set up and for about 24-48 hours after installing any new iOS update your phone will use more power as it rebuilds its internal databases used for search and other tasks.

AstWales wrote:

Just wanted to register to say the same thing. A one hour cellular call drains 17%, I've only had the phone a couple of weeks. Most wifi activity (streaming vids etc) seems fine, but making a regular call drains so much. I sometimes make several long calls in a day, so just three would drain over half of my battery.

Apple doesn't read here for feedback or suggestions. If you want them to know your observations, use the feedback portal:

Product Feedback - Apple