P: Lightroom iPad/iPhone Device overheats & brightness dims

Report · Dec 19, 2017

I haven't found anything related to this in online searches, so i thought i would ask Lightroom users.

I have Lightroom mobile installed on my iPhone 7 and when i use it, the phone gets very hot. If the ambient temp is 90 or better (which happens quite often here in Florida), the phone will overheat and shut down after a while. I used it without that happening yesterday (ambient temps around 75), but the phone was still quite hot. I have a pretty thin Spigen case on the phone, and it doesn't get hot with anything other apps.

Has anyone else experienced this?

Thanks,

Steve

Report · Mar 28, 2018

It appears only you and I are having this issue. I live in the UK, so it probably is not that you live in a warmer climate. To date, I have not been able to get any answers to this problem.

Report · Mar 29, 2018

I’ve noticed the same problem, both when editing raw photos taken on the phone (I have an iPhone X) and also when taking HDR images while they are processing. The phone gets really hot in one particular spot which I assume is where the image processing is taking place - right below the camera.

Report · Apr 17, 2019

I too am having this issue. When i open lightroom on my iphone, after about five minutes the phone will overheat to the point where its actually too hot to handle. Also, my iphone brightness dims shortly after i feel the phone heating up. This makes it impossible to edit photos.

Report · Apr 17, 2019

It is also worth mentioning that I live in Ireland. So this issue has clearly got nothing to do with climate.

Report · Jun 19, 2019

Lightroom Mobile is making my phone overheat. I opened the Lightroom Mobile app on my iphone xs for the first time today. I clicked on the camera icon to shoot using LR mobile. Immediately my phone got hot just below the lens area of the phone. It is almost too hot to touch. Turning off the app stopped the heating. Turning back on the app started the extreme heating again. Has anyone had this problem? Is there something I need to do or some setting to change. It isn't usable at all with this kind of heating. I didn't experience this when I used LR mobile on my previous iphone 6. I haven't had any other app cause heating on this iphone xs. The iphone xs is 2 months old.

Report · Jun 20, 2019

Moving to Lightroom for mobile & Apple TV

Report · Jun 20, 2019

I’ve noticed the same on my iPhone X since I got it 1.5 years ago. While it hasn’t created any problems, it is annoying. I get it usually in one of two cases:

1. Flipping through newly imported photos (I guess it is generating previews)

2. Taking many HDR photos sequentially and waiting for them to process

Sometimes it seems random, though, and not associated with any specific activity.

I usually will let any active processing complete, then force quit the app and wait for my phone to cool before restarting Lightroom. I always figured it was just LR pushing the hardware to its limits. Maybe there’s a bug involved. If so, it might be good to report something over at Lightroom Mobile | Photoshop Family Customer Community

Mike

Report · Jun 20, 2019

As Mike already mentioned, HDR captures require processing and doing lots of this can generate some heat. I believe it is right under the camera lenses where the device logic board and CPU reside.

I just tried my XS Max which is similar in specs to your device, and while I feel heat after processing 30 HDR captured images, it doesn't seem as extreme as the experience you describe. I have tried both with and without the thick plastic case I usually keep on my XS Max. I'm asking a teammate with the XS to try to reproduce what you described.

Let me ask some questions to clarify what's happening:

-- What iOS version is your device currently running?

-- Are you on the latest version of Lightroom (4.3.1)?

-- Are you experiencing this heat during capture? Or is this experienced after exiting the LR camera and processing your recent captures?

--What kind of images are you capturing? Basic DNGs or JPGs from the camera's Auto or Pro Mode? HDRs? Or one of the experimental Tech Preview features you might enable in the app settings?

-- Are you using WiFi, or cellular? I've noticed my own devices can get warm when the device is on cellular and struggling with low bars/signal. This can cause a device to warm up a lot, especially when any app wants to use lots of data (not just LR syncing, but also Maps, Safari, etc). Is it possible your cellular radio is stressed by a weak signal? (Note: when I go to my garage where my own signal is extremely weak, and I do lots of capture processing and syncing over weak cellular, I do feel heat, but not nearly "too hot to touch."

-- What's the temperature of your environment? Is your phone in a case that traps heat?

-- Does this continue to reproduce if you uninstall/re-install?

-- Does rebooting the device help?

Thanks for sharing details that may help us understand better what you're experiencing.

--Charlie

Report · Jun 20, 2019

Hi Charlie,

Thanks for looking into this! Here are the answers to your questions.

-- I am running on the latest iOS 12.3.1

-- Looks like I'm running Lightroom v. 4.3.1 D38580

-- Yes, I am noticing it during capture. I will say that I think in the background the app was also going through my camera roll/phone photos and loading some photos perhaps? I'm not sure exactly what it was doing, but it was attempting to do something with some photos upon opening the app. But I specifically clicked on the camera icon to go into shooting mode. I tried again just now (since there are no additional photos left for it to load in the background) and it still seems like it is heating (directly underneath the camera) in the shooting mode, but definitely not as aggressively heating as what I was experiencing last night. So maybe this has more to do with loading photos or doing that simultaneously while shooting. Not sure.

-- I am capturing basic DNGs in Pro Mode. Not HDRs. No other special settings. I was moving around the sliders for ISO, shutter speed, and WB.

-- WiFi with a good signal.

-- Inside in an air-conditioned home. So normal room temps. My phone has a Sonix case on it. It's one of the clear ones with the pretty painted flowers on it, so nothing overly bulky. Its thin and covers the back and sides of the phone.

-- I have not tried to uninstall/re-install the app yet

-- Rebooting the iphone didn't help.

Thanks,

Libby

Report · Jun 20, 2019

Hi Libby

Thanks for the additional notes. I do see that when I import lots of photos from my camera roll into Lightroom, my XS Max device warms up. The app is doing a lot of processing when ingesting images, and when running Capture on top of that, yes the processor is being used quite a bit. It makes sense that once importing has finished that the device is not being taxed as much and even with Capture open it runs cooler now.

I believe the iPhone OS has safeguards (ie, throttling down) to ensure the processor isn't damaged from high use/temperatures. I'll still ping our engineers to confirm this is all expected.

Thanks!

Charlie

Report · Jun 21, 2019

I have the same overheating problem using an iPhone X

Report · Jul 14, 2019

Same Problem here,

iPhone 8

Lightroom V 4.3.2

Phone gets VERY hot VERY quickly

in both modes, camera & editing.

And it‘s even getting hot, if nothing is actually done with the app / when app is iddle.

And of course it drains the battery very quickly.

I live in Germany (moderate climate)

Please Adobe fix this!

Report · Aug 01, 2019

My phone also gets very hot! I only had it open for five minutes & I had to close it, it was so hot. I’m in the United States on the west coast. Adobe needs to fix this!

Report · Aug 01, 2019

Hi Megan et all

We've read the problem reports on this thread and are investigating, but are not able to reproduce heat to the significant extent described in some cases above.

Some functions in Lightroom (importing many photos, editing large images (esp raw photos with lots of image data), processing LR camera HDRs and long exposures, etc) do use the CPU heavily. However, CPU heat and battery consumption should perform like other apps that use the CPU as much. For what it's worth, I've tried iPhone 7, 8, X and XS MAX, setting them up to process images for 45 minutes straight, including having the 7, X, and XS MAX inside solid Spigen cases like a previous post mentioned. With ambient temps at 75 F / 24 C, each device's CPU was clearly warm but not at alarming levels like users here have experienced.

Another thing that can generate heat and use the battery heavily is when the cellular radio has to struggle due to poor signal or crowded cellular service. I have experienced my screen going dim once when I was at a convention, trying to upload a large file (to another service not related to Adobe). My device at the time (an iPhone 6 or 6S) was indeed warm and the battery level dropped quickly.

For any new posts here, it would help to hear specific details about which app functions you are using, and are you also syncing or uploading in the background, and are other apps like iCloud potentially working/syncing in the background. Also, please mention how good/poor your cellular signal seems to be, or if you're on WiFi, etc.

Lastly, heat issues might be a sign that your device needs service. Please don't misunderstand -- I'm not suggesting this explains all the troubles mentioned here. I just want to say that if your device exhibits heat issue in general, and this has become worse over time, you might ask Apple's Genius bar if they can run a free diagnostic on your device just to rule out any hardware level issues.

Megan, since you had recent issues, I'm going to send you some info to get a diagnostic log from you -- maybe it'll indicate what's causing such high CPU usage.

Report · Sep 23, 2019

I'm from Toronto and I have the same problem with my iPhone 8, and it happens when I was taking pictures from Lightroom in raw mode, it heat up so quick and some time the app crashed, and before I try taking any raw pictures I had the phone not charging and not being used overnight, it's pretty chill before I start Lightroom.

Sometime I was able to take some raw pictures without those problem.

Report · Sep 23, 2019

Taking pictures, even ones that require lots of processing like HDRs or long exposures should not cause this kind of excessive heat. We have tried to reproduce this in-house and while devices do warm up with CPU use, and cellular radio use, it's not to this extent described by users here. Just to play it safe, anyone experiencing excessive heat: please consider taking your device to an Apple store and let them run a diagnostic on it to make sure your device and battery are working normally.

We're continuing to investigate this, and are still monitoring feedback here.

Report · Sep 23, 2019

@Charlie_D I have the same issue every time I edit photos. My usual workflow (on an iPhone X) is to import a RAW photo from the Photos app into Lightroom, then when I’m done, render out to a new photo and then open that up in VSCO and sometimes some other app too. It does seem like it heats up more when going into the Color tab in Lightroom and often when changing the color temperature.

You also mention that it should behave like other apps, but I would argue that this app in particular should be mindful of not heating up enough to require dimming the screen, since that makes it impossible to properly use the app because of the primary use being editing photos. I would be more forgiving if the screen dims in other apps. If there is something you could do to slow down CPU intensive tasks to reduce heat, I would take that any day over dimming the screen every X minutes.

I hope my details help somewhat in investigating this! Let me know if I should give some more details.

Report · Sep 23, 2019

I forgot to mention that at least this time my phone was charging while this was happening. But it has happened while not charging as well. And anyway, I would expect the app to manage this and still not overheat regardless of charging.

Report · Nov 11, 2019

Same issue been biting me. Been editing photos in Thailand 80+ degrees on iPhone XS. Lightroom causes the display to dim as soon as I change color temperature (no pun intended). I have to reboot phone or let it sit a while. Also seems to be draining battery when open in the BG. If I look at iOS brightness prefs they are still fully bright.., LR is taking it over, and what sucks is it is dimming the image, not the display... if I post to Instagram it's dim. Incredibly frustrating.

Report · Nov 25, 2019

Hello, only in Lightroom iOS's camera does the app override the system brightness controls. If the screen is going uncontrollably dim relative to what you've set in iOS Settings > Display & Brightness, then your device is warm and trying to cool down. iOS is dimming your screen, not LR.

Lightroom uses CPU resources and battery when editing and processing images, and while syncing. This can generate heat. Use of the device radio when syncing can also generate heat and use lots of battery, especially when the radio is struggling more than usual. Syncing can continue for a short while even after sending the app into the background, but iOS has limits on how long and this should not be long enough to drain one's battery. To see if LR is indeed causing your device to heat just by syncing, go to iOS Settings > Lightroom, and check if disabling Cellular Data and Background App Refresh helps. Also, if on cellular, is your device struggle with poor or unstable service in general? If you are on WiFi, is it a stable connection, and not too crowded?

Can you desscribe the kind of network connection used, it's stability and throughput, and is used by many people. Also, can you share what iOS version is running on your iPhone XS?

Report · Dec 16, 2019

I also have this issue, running iOS 13.x and the latest versions of LR mobile on iPhone X. I see this issue most when making many adjustments quickly, as well as pasting settings to other photos.

This is definitely due to the device drawing a lot of power, warming, and having the OS dim the screen as a result. For what it's worth, my battery health is normal.

I do like the mobile workflow more than I expected to, but having the screen dim while editing exposure is incredibly disruptive.

I'm wondering if anyone has seen a change in performance when moving to an iPhone 11 (not that that should be the suggested fix.)

Report · Dec 18, 2019

Same issue.

Last iOS : 13.3

Last LR

iPhone 7, becomes very hot when editing RAW on iPhone. Doesn't seem to happen on iPad. (Not same heat presentation hardware system I guess, so not really a good comparison).

Report · Mar 17, 2020

When editing photos in Lightroom on my iPad Pro, the screen brightness dims every 10-20mins or so. I then have to lock my screen and leave it for a few minutes before it goes back to its original brightness. I already turned off automatic brightness, dark mode, true tone, the automatic brightness in the accessibility section as well.

This only happens when I'm working in Lightroom and then it effects the whole screen when I exit Lightroom as well. Don't have this problem when I power off my device and put it on again and then work with other apps and don't open Lightroom.

{Moved from Lightroom Cloud to Lightroom Mobile Forum by Moderator}

Report · Mar 25, 2020

I have a similar problem on ipad 11:(

Hope this problem can be solved!

Report · Mar 26, 2020

I'm having the same issue on my iPad Pro 11", apparently it happens when the iPad is reheating which is quite annoying as I mainly use it for editing photos in Lightroom and having a screen that's is dimming all the time slows my work as I can't continue editing without knowing exactly how the photos are going to look.

P: Lightroom iPad/iPhone Device overheats & brightness dims

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