This swollen iPhone 15 Pro battery raises more overheating questions for Apple

iPhone 15 Pro with swollen battery
(Image credit: Leather_Cheerio_402)

The iPhone 15 Pro has only been around for a week but it's already starting to find that it has its own antennagate-like situation to deal with. People have been complaining of overheating iPhones, although the issue is far from impacting all owners. But things just got ratcheted up a notch after a photo appeared online that appears to show an iPhone's battery becoming swollen.

Swollen batteries do happen of course, but they can be dangerous. In this instance, the swollen battery appears to have started to push the iPhone's display out, causing the deformation you see above.

While batteries have been swelling in iPhones and indeed all phones for years, the added complication of the heat situation makes this instance more notable.

'Realized the phone is actually swelling'

The photo was posted to Reddit and spotted by WCCFTech and the iPhone's owner says that they only noticed the swelling when they tried to install a case.

"Picked up the phone on Monday and didn’t notice it then," the iPhone's owner explain in the Reddit post. "Put on a case a couple days ago and noticed it didn’t fit right. Was going order a new case but then realized the phone is actually swelling. Still works for now."

To be clear, we wouldn't suggest using or charging an iPhone whose battery has started to swell.

Perhaps most interesting is the fact the owner says they went to an Apple Store for help but they were told to take it back to the place of purchase for assistance. That doesn't sound like the kind of response we would expect, especially if everything went down the way we're told it did. It's possible there's more to this story than we see at first blush, but it doesn't look great out of the gate.

As for the iPhone 15 Pro overheating situation, Apple says that it's normal and that there are a few things you can do to help.

Oliver Haslam
Contributor

Oliver Haslam has written about Apple and the wider technology business for more than a decade with bylines on How-To Geek, PC Mag, iDownloadBlog, and many more. He has also been published in print for Macworld, including cover stories. At iMore, Oliver is involved in daily news coverage and, not being short of opinions, has been known to 'explain' those thoughts in more detail, too. Having grown up using PCs and spending far too much money on graphics card and flashy RAM, Oliver switched to the Mac with a G5 iMac and hasn't looked back. Since then he's seen the growth of the smartphone world, backed by iPhone, and new product categories come and go. Current expertise includes iOS, macOS, streaming services, and pretty much anything that has a battery or plugs into a wall. Oliver also covers mobile gaming for iMore, with Apple Arcade a particular focus. He's been gaming since the Atari 2600 days and still struggles to comprehend the fact he can play console quality titles on his pocket computer.