Facepalm: Just after Apple released an update that addresses the iPhone 15 Pro's overheating issues, a more serious problem has appeared in Cupertino's expensive handsets: OLED burn-in. There's been a slew of reports of image retention on the iPhone 15 Pro Max phones, with ghostly outlines of home screen icons and the keyboard visible on the displays.

Burn-in, which occurs when an unmoving image is displayed on part of a screen for too long, has been a concern with OLED panels for years. Manufacturers have introduced ways to mitigate the problem in recent times, making it less of an issue, so it's a surprise to see reports of burn-in on the iPhone 15 Pro Max just weeks after it launched.

Owners of Apple's latest flagship have been highlighting instances of burn-in on Reddit, X/Twitter, Apple's own community forum, and elsewhere.

A MacRumors forum user writes that he discovered burn-in after just 14 days of using the iPhone 15 Pro Max. The poster said he did have the optional Always On mode enabled, but the timer was set to turn the screen off after being idle for 2 minutes.

The user took his handset to an Apple Store for an appointment with someone at the Genius bar. The engineer informed him that the phone was experiencing "ghosting." The usual solution was to replace the screen, but there were no parts available given that the iPhone 15 Pro Max had just been released. Instead, a replacement was to be ordered, but being so new meant there were none available. As such, the customer had to wait for another device to arrive.

A Redditor whose iPhone 15 Pro Max also suffers from burn-in said they just used it "normally." Strangely, the screen also shows the ghostly image of a thumbnail from a YouTube video the person had watched.

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Several other people have confirmed the burn-in problem on their iPhone 15 Pro Max handsets - it appears this is the only model affected – and that Apple has agreed to replace the phones, once there are some in stock. It's unclear just how widespread the issue is right now.

Reports that Apple's latest phones were overheating arrived just one week after their launch, something that analyst Ming-Chi Kuo blamed on the thermal design. Earlier this month, Apple released iOS version 17.0.3 with an included patch that addressed the overheating issues. But it looks as if Cupertino now has something else to worry about in its latest flagship.