This story was updated on October 20th. Update below.
Apple’s iOS 17.1 update may have solved the iPhone 15 screen burn issue according to early reports.
For the uninitiated, some iPhone 15 Pro Max owners were suffering from what seemed to be extreme screen burn-in, otherwise known as image persistence, where a shadow of an image is permanently etched into the display.
iPhone owners complained on Reddit, Apple’s Community forums and on Twitter/X. This, unfortunately, is the downside of OLED displays, but it’s rare for this to happen to so early in a device’s life cycle and to the extent demonstrated by users.
Apple promised a fix in iOS 17.1 RC (via MacRumors), which is currently available to beta testers and will be rolled out widely next week. As the update hits testers and developers, some early reports suggest that the screen burn issue may have been fixed.
Reddit user u/spriteice, who posted a viral picture of extreme burn-in two days ago, has uploaded a post-iOS 17.1 update picture that appears to show the problem has been fixed. Another user, u/Srihari_stan, claimed that their screen burn problem has been solved after the update, also with a before and after image.
It’s early days and the update hasn’t rolled out to the public yet, so we will see if others have similar success when it comes to removing the image persistence issue. What’s not clear is if this problem is actually screen burn-in or a simple display bug. Typically, image persistence is a hardware fault that requires a replacement screen. Most of the solutions are preventative, like turning brightness down or switching always-on-display off, which reduces the chance of a constantly displayed image burning into the screen.
Manufacturers offset possible burn-in with higher quality OLED panels that have longer lasting LEDs. Some software trickery is also used, which Apple explains in its breakdown of the company’s Super Retina displays. “This includes special algorithms that monitor the usage of individual pixels to produce display calibration data. Your iPhone uses that data to automatically adjust the brightness levels for each pixel as needed to reduce visual effects from burn-in and to maintain a consistent viewing experience.”
In any case, screen burn-in shouldn’t happen after a couple of weeks of use. It normally takes years to be noticeable, especially on a high-end device like the iPhone 15 Pro Max. The way to fix it is often a hardware replacement, not a software update, which suggests that this isn’t an issue of image persistence.
Ricky Panesar, founder of repair specialists iCorrect, told me that the fact that the issue has potentially been solved by a software update suggests this isn’t screen burn-in. “It doesn’t appear to be screen burn, it looks like there was an issue with the algorithm that is responsible for resetting the data on the screen. They’ve introduced new firmware which clears the screen fresh of new information. Think of how we used to clear the text on an Etch A Sketch. Hates off to them, it’s absolutely incredible.”
Apple hasn’t given any more detail about what caused the original problem, but we will see if the iOS 17.1 fix works for other affected iPhones when it rolls out to the public next week.
October 20th update. There’s another potential bug in iOS 17.0.3 that hasn’t been resolved by the 17.1 update. A few weeks ago several users on Reddit and X/Twitter noticed that their iPhone 15 models were turning off in the middle of the night and silencing notifications, which is causing some iPhone owners to miss their alarms.
Users, and reporters at 9To5Mac and MacRumors, spotted that they had to enter a passcode—instead of Face ID working straight away—when they first used their phones in the morning, which indicated the device had restarted.
Some users also found that there are gaps in overnight battery usage when delving into battery data settings. It’s not clear what’s causing this, but MacRumors claims that the issue has not been fixed by iOS 17.1 RC, which is available to early testers and developers right now as detailed in this story.
Interestingly, this may not just be an iOS 17 problem because some Redditors complained that they’ve experienced a similar issue for years. However the majority of cases appears to be recent after updating to the latest OS version. The concern of course is that if the phone is switching off without prompt, people may miss important calls or alarms while they’re completely unaware.
iOS 17.1 has fixed other bugs, like the major screen burn-in problem as mentioned above, alongside keyboard responsiveness and the incoming caller prompt not appearing on screen when the user is on another call.
But the other major fix is related to the screen time function. Some parents have reported that screen time limits set for their children will switch off randomly and without prompt. This has been an issue since iOS 16. Despite Apple claiming to patch the problem in iOS 16.5, users say it has persisted in iOS 17. The 17.1 release notes include a fix for this, so we’ll see if the problem has finally been properly resolved.
For now, it looks like iPhone 15 users who are experiencing their phones randomly switching off at night will have to wait for a future update because Apple is yet to acknowledge the complaints.
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