An unknown number of iPhone 15 Pro Max owners are finding the image of home screen apps being burnt-in to the display, but the issue doesn't appear to be any worse than any other year.
Burn-in seen on an iPhone 15 Pro Max (source: "Surfphysics" on Apple Support discussion)
Burn-in may be best known from the old days of CRT screens, but it has been an issue with OLED displays. In any case, burn-in is typically something that typically happens after a very long time with the same images being shown on the screen.
Now, however, a month after the iPhone 15 range went on sale, users of the iPhone 15 Pro Max are reporting issues on Reddit and in Apple's support forums, as first spotted by iMore. It's not a widespread problem, and it's not known whether it also affects the iPhone 15 Pro.
"Most cases of burn-in in televisions is a result of static images or on-screen elements displaying on the screen uninterrupted for many hours or days at a time - with brightness typically at peak levels," OLED manufacturer LG says, "So, it is possible to create image retention in almost any display if one really tries hard enough."
AppleInsider has been collecting data from many sources across Apple's service chain since 2015. From that data, so far, the absolute number of OLED burn-in reports from Apple Service data in mid-October year-over-year is less than it has been for the last three years. This could be attributed to different release timings, but ultimately, there is not a statistically significant deviance of failures.
That doesn't necessarily mean that there isn't a problem, and that data is cold-comfort to anyone suffering from the issue. As with any of these reports on social media of problems, AppleInsider recommends getting any issue documented with Apple. The company does not respond to social media complaints, and will only take action with data from its service chain.