iPhone 15 Pro: Did Apple throttle performance to reduce heat? Answer in comparisons

After the iPhone 15 Pro and 15 Pro Max were released in late September, many users complained about overheating issues in various usage situations. The A17 Pro chip was quickly blamed, as was the smartphone’s new titanium frame, but Apple instead announced that it was a software issue in iOS 17.

Therefore, the company hastened to distribute iOS 17.0.3 with a fix that would theoretically reduce the temperature of devices, and this is actually what many Internet users noticed after installing the update. Did the company reduce the performance of its smartphones to achieve such success? we wanted to check We subject the iPhone 15 Pro Max to the same criteria as in our test, but this time with the new update installed.

Did iPhone 15 Pro Max slow down after the update?

Apple’s A17 Pro chip is by far the most powerful chip on the market, but above all it is the first chip processed at 3nm by TSMC. In the benchmarks we made while testing the iPhone 15 Pro Max, the chip managed to reach 2940 points in a single core and 7400 points in all cores in Geekbench. In the famous AnTuTu test, the smartphone scored at least 1,558,123 points, again breaking an iPhone record.

With the new iOS 17.0.3 update installed, new tests of the iPhone 15 Pro Max are clear: It is less powerful than the previous version. In Geekbench 6, the smartphone now scores 2922 points in only a single core and 7259 points in all cores.. That’s why we care decreases of 0.5% and 2% respectively.. However, we can note that An improvement in the GPU’s Metal scoreIt increased to 27333 points against 27140 points previously.

In AnTuTu, the updated smartphone is also slightly slower, scoring a total of 1,551,613 points, with a 0.5% drop in performance. If These small deviations may result from slightly different testing conditions and other hazards.The remaining benchmarks seem to confirm that Apple is reducing the power of smartphones.

In the Wild Life Unlimited benchmark, our iPhone 15 Pro Max initially scored 14960 with an average of 89.6 frames per second. With the update, the smartphone gets only 9247 points, a whopping drop of almost 38%. The average frames per second drops to just 55.4.

Therefore, the performance difference in this benchmark is quite noticeable, and we were able to confirm these results with another benchmark: Solar Bay Unlimited. While the iPhone 15 Pro Max received 5911 points in our previous test, the device updated to iOS 17.0.3 could only score 4555 points. We are facing a 23% drop in performance. This is also very important. So the GPU seems to be limited compared to the previous iOS version, at least in these benchmarks. This doesn’t necessarily mean decline in most games.

So it’s entirely possible that Apple will choose to reduce the power of its high-end smartphones in some scenarios, but not in others. Some other tests on social networks have shown performance improvements in certain benchmarks. It’s strange to see that not all users see the same changes on their devices. So, have you noticed any difference in the performance of your own iPhone 15 Pro before and after the update? Feel free to tell us in the comments.