عربي English Türkçe اردو فارسى
Logo
Latest News
Technology

Apple Says it Will Fix Software Problems Blamed for Making iPhone 15 Models Too Hot to Handle

FILE - The iPhone 15 phones are shown during an announcement of new products on the Apple campus in Cupertino, Calif., Tuesday, Sept. 12, 2023. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu, File)
FILE - The iPhone 15 phones are shown during an announcement of new products on the Apple campus in Cupertino, Calif., Tuesday, Sept. 12, 2023. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu, File)
TT
TT

Apple Says it Will Fix Software Problems Blamed for Making iPhone 15 Models Too Hot to Handle

FILE - The iPhone 15 phones are shown during an announcement of new products on the Apple campus in Cupertino, Calif., Tuesday, Sept. 12, 2023. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu, File)
FILE - The iPhone 15 phones are shown during an announcement of new products on the Apple campus in Cupertino, Calif., Tuesday, Sept. 12, 2023. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu, File)

Apple is blaming a software bug and other issues tied to popular apps such as Instagram and Uber for causing its recently released iPhone 15 models to heat up and spark complaints about becoming too hot to handle.
The Cupertino, California, company said Saturday that it is working on an update to the iOS17 system that powers the iPhone 15 lineup to prevent the devices from becoming uncomfortably hot and is working with apps that are running in ways “causing them to overload the system."
Instagram, owned by Meta Platforms, modified its social media app earlier this week to prevent it from heating up the device on the latest iPhone operating system.
Uber and other apps such as the video game Asphalt 9 are still in the process of rolling out their updates, Apple said. It didn't specify a timeline for when its own software fix would be issued but said no safety issues should prevent iPhone 15 owners from using their devices while awaiting the update.
“We have identified a few conditions which can cause iPhone to run warmer than expected," Apple in a short statement provided to The Associated Press after media reports detailed overheating complaints that are peppering online message boards.
The Wall Street Journal amplified the worries in a story citing the overheating problem in its own testing of the new iPhones, which went on sale a week ago.
It’s not unusual for new iPhones to get uncomfortably warm during the first few days of use or when they are being restored with backup information stored in the cloud — issues that Apple already flags for users. The devices also can get hot when using apps such as video games and augmented reality technology that require a lot of processing power, but the heating issues with the iPhone 15 models have gone beyond those typical situations.
In its acknowledgement, Apple stressed that the trouble isn't related to the sleek titanium casing that houses the high-end iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max instead of the stainless steel used on older smartphones.
Apple also dismissed speculation that the overheating problem in the new models might be tied to a shift from its proprietary Lightning charging cable to the more widely used USB-C port that allowed it to comply with a mandate issued by European regulators.
Although Apple expressed confidence that the overheating issue can be quickly fixed with the upcoming software updates, the problem still could dampen sales of its marquee product at time when the company has faced three consecutive quarters of year-over-year declines in overall sales.
The downturn has affected iPhone sales, which fell by a combined 4% in the nine months covered by Apple's past three fiscal quarters compared with a year earlier.
Apple is trying to pump up its sales in part by raising the starting price for its top-of-the-line iPhone 15 Pro Max to $1,200, an increase of $100, or 9%, from last year's comparable model.

Most Viewed

 
 
Technology

EU Accepts Action Plan by Elon Musk’s X to Become More Transparent

Teens pose for a photo while holding smartphones in front of the X logo. (Reuters)
Teens pose for a photo while holding smartphones in front of the X logo. (Reuters)
TT
TT

EU Accepts Action Plan by Elon Musk’s X to Become More Transparent

Teens pose for a photo while holding smartphones in front of the X logo. (Reuters)
Teens pose for a photo while holding smartphones in front of the X logo. (Reuters)

‌The European Union, which fined Elon Musk's social media network X €120 million ($137.2 million) last year, said on Wednesday it had accepted an action plan by X to comply ‌with transparency ‌rules under ‌the ⁠EU's Digital Services Act.

"The ⁠European Commission has accepted X's action plan to comply with transparency obligations and researchers' access to data ⁠under the Digital ‌Services ‌Act," it said in ‌a statement.

"The approved ‌measures represent an important step in enabling researchers, civil society and the public ‌in general to gain more transparency into ⁠X's ⁠systems, in particular to monitor X's systemic risks and to assess the platform's broader impact on its users and European society as a whole," it added.

Technology

China's DeepSeek to Raise Fresh Capital at $74 Billion Valuation Ahead of Onshore IPO

FILE PHOTO: A DeepSeek AI sign is seen at a building where the Chinese start-up's office is located in Beijing, China, February 19, 2025. REUTERS/Florence Lo/File Photo
FILE PHOTO: A DeepSeek AI sign is seen at a building where the Chinese start-up's office is located in Beijing, China, February 19, 2025. REUTERS/Florence Lo/File Photo
TT
TT

China's DeepSeek to Raise Fresh Capital at $74 Billion Valuation Ahead of Onshore IPO

FILE PHOTO: A DeepSeek AI sign is seen at a building where the Chinese start-up's office is located in Beijing, China, February 19, 2025. REUTERS/Florence Lo/File Photo
FILE PHOTO: A DeepSeek AI sign is seen at a building where the Chinese start-up's office is located in Beijing, China, February 19, 2025. REUTERS/Florence Lo/File Photo

Chinese AI startup DeepSeek is planning to launch a fresh fundraising round at a valuation of about 500 billion yuan ($74 billion) ahead of a potential mainland initial public offering, two people with knowledge of the matter said.

The plan comes just weeks after the Hangzhou-based company, which drew global attention with its low-cost AI models in 2025, raised about $7.4 billion in June a post-money valuation of about 450 billion yuan, the people said.

The back-to-back fundraising plans underscore strong investor appetite for one of China's most closely watched AI companies, but also point to the rising costs of competing in AI, which requires large amounts of computing power, data-center capacity and engineering talent.

DeepSeek is looking to raise as much as 50 billion yuan in the new funding round, according to a third person briefed on the ⁠matter.

It has also started ⁠early deliberations on a potential IPO on Shanghai's Nasdaq-style STAR Market, the three sources and two other people with knowledge of the plan said.

The company has set an internal target to complete an IPO filing this year, one of them told Reuters.

All the people declined to be identified because the information is not public. The fundraising and IPO plans are at early stages and terms and timetable may change, they said.

DeepSeek did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Bloomberg News first reported on Tuesday ⁠that DeepSeek was preparing for a possible IPO filing, while the Financial Times reported that the company was weighing a fresh fundraising round at a valuation of at least 480 billion yuan.

DeepSeek shook global technology markets last year after releasing models that appeared to rival leading US systems at lower training and operating costs.

Soon after its maiden fundraising round in June, DeepSeek said it planned to double staff across departments, including in areas such as data centers and AI agents, systems capable of performing tasks with limited prompting.

Some of those initiatives will require significant capital expenditure. Reuters reported earlier this month that DeepSeek was looking to develop its own AI inference chip and had discreetly increased hiring of chip-design engineers for the project.

DeepSeek had long stood out in China's AI sector for rejecting outside ⁠funding. Founder Liang Wenfeng ⁠had largely bankrolled the company using his quantitative hedge fund High-Flyer before its recent external financing, sources previously told Reuters.

But the cost of staying at the frontier of AI has risen sharply, forcing a change in strategy.

DeepSeek has in the past year faced stiff competition at home from tech giants including ByteDance and Alibaba, as well as well-funded AI startups such as Z.ai, Moonshot, and MiniMax.

In the June funding round, DeepSeek founder Liang personally committed 20 billion yuan, while Tencent Holdings and battery giant CATL chipped in 10 billion yuan and 5 billion yuan respectively to become the largest external shareholders, Reuters reported at the time.

Other investors include China's national AI fund, gaming developer NetEase and e-commerce giant JD.com , as well as investment firms IDG Capital, Loyal Valley Capital, Monolith Management and Shixiang Capital, according to sources and media reports.

The participation of the state-backed AI fund highlighted DeepSeek's strategic importance to Beijing's efforts to build domestic AI champions and reduce reliance on foreign technology.

Technology

Generative AI’s Power Sparks Fears of Dumbing Humans Down

An AI sign is seen at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai, China July 6, 2023. (Reuters)
An AI sign is seen at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai, China July 6, 2023. (Reuters)
TT
TT

Generative AI’s Power Sparks Fears of Dumbing Humans Down

An AI sign is seen at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai, China July 6, 2023. (Reuters)
An AI sign is seen at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai, China July 6, 2023. (Reuters)

Generative AI chatbots capable of writing emails and computer code, translating, organizing a trip or coming up with gift ideas are now readily available, prompting some to ask whether human brainpower could suffer for lack of use.

A simple natural-language prompt is usually enough to draw a useable response from a service like ChatGPT or Claude, with the effects making themselves felt in schools and universities, workplaces from offices to courtrooms and our personal lives.

Recent scientific studies suggest there could be harmful consequences to farming out cognitive tasks to AI.

They highlight memory, decision-making and critical thinking as particularly at risk.

One American-British study of 1,222 people, still under peer review, found that using AI tools to solve arithmetic or reading comprehension exercises improved participants' performance in the short term, but in the long run diminished their results and their willingness to keep trying when the tools were unavailable.

"These findings are particularly concerning because persistence is foundational to skill acquisition and is one of the strongest predictors of long-term learning," the authors wrote.

AI's ability to conjure up speedy responses to all kinds of questions "removes learning opportunities" from users, said Carnegie Mellon University doctoral student Grace Liu, the article's main author.

"What makes AI particularly concerning is that it's not a tool designated for one specific kind of activity. It's something that can be used across pretty much any intellectual, reasoning, and cognitive activity."

The technology's adaptability to different kinds of problems sets it apart from previous waves of computerized aids.

Electronic calculators, for instance, may have helped users solve equations, but left the method and reasoning process in human hands.

- Saving energy -

One 2025 MIT study went viral for its finding that students using generative AI to write essays displayed less critical thinking capability.

Other research has pointed the same way, highlighting what has come to be called "cognitive offloading" -- or even "cognitive surrender".

"Human beings have a strong tendency to save energy," said Johann Chevalere, a researcher in social and cognitive psychology at France's publicly-funded CNRS institution.

"In daily life, we often use strategies that get us to the heart of the matter quicker, without necessarily taking the time to study in depth the information we need to process, as this can be cognitively costly," he added.

Generative AI use could strengthen this tendency, Chevalere said.

"If there are activities you never do, the brain -- which works by saving energy -- won't go to the trouble of maintaining connections that aren't being used."

- Encouraging reflection -

Under pressure from critics, generative AI developers have begun building so-called "Socratic" functions into their models, which for now remain mostly aimed at students.

In this mode, chatbots do not simply provide the answer, instead offering hints and asking questions to stimulate users' thinking.

Examples include the "study mode" built into OpenAI's ChatGPT, or "guided learning" in Google's Gemini.

US software giant Microsoft told AFP it had built warnings about the risk of mistakes into its Copilot models.

The AI also reminds users to check the information it provides, just one of several measures designed to keep them actively and critically engaged with its responses.

"The risk of excessive cognitive offloading is real, especially if AI is used to automate tasks that are also valuable for developing skills," Microsoft said, adding that users have to be trained to use the tools correctly.

For now, there is a lack of large-scale, long-term studies to judge the true impact of the new technology on human brains, researchers agreed.

Until they are available, "it's up to us to use AI in a smart way," Chevalere said.

"We'll adapt to this technological revolution just as we have to the previous ones."