BMW owners report that placing the iPhone 15 Pro on the car’s wireless charger triggers a recovery mode after which Apple Pay stops completely working. While initially thought to be a one-off incident, the problem seems to be recurring even after multiple replacements of the device. So far, the complaints have been with respect to the iPhone 15 Pro, but it is not clear whether the issue affects the iPhone 15 Pro Max and the regular iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Plus as well.
Right from cracking black glasses under pressure to the overheating A17 Pro chip, high surface temperatures under load, and concerns of swollen batteries, Apple’s latest iPhone 15 Pro and the iPhone 15 Pro Max have made several headlines for not-so-good reasons.
Recently, there have been reports of CarPlay not working when the iPhone 15 is connected to the car via USB-C. Now, new reports have surfaced that BMW owners are frying their iPhone 15 Pro’s NFC chip if the phone is charged via the car’s wireless charging pad.
Several BMW owners took to X (fka Twitter) and the MacRumors forums complaining that Apple Pay has stopped working on their iPhone 15 Pros all of a sudden. The issue seems to have occurred after users put their phones on the car’s wireless charger. They note that the iPhone enters into a data recovery mode with a white screen, and the NFC no longer works after a reboot. The Wallet apps throws up a message “Could Not Set up Apple Pay”.
The NFC chip powers contactless transactions via Apple Pay and digital car keys. Affected users could get a replacement from Apple, but unfortunately even these met the same fate when used with the BMW wireless charger, which incidentally is also an NFC reader. It took some users exchanging up to three phones before the correlation between the BMW charger and the subsequent frying of the iPhone 15 Pro’s NFC chip started becoming apparent.
The older iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 13 Pro models reportedly work just fine. All reports so far seem to pertain to the new iPhone 15 Pro, but it is not fully clear whether the iPhone 15 Pro Max, or even the regular iPhone 15 and 15 Plus, are affected as well.
Apple and BMW are yet to respond on this, and the latest iOS 17.0.3 does not hint at any fixes to this effect.
If you are a BMW owner and have just got your shiny new iPhone 15 Pro, it may be better to hold on from using the car’s wireless charger until more concrete information emerges.
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Though a cell and molecular biologist by training, I have been drawn towards computers from a very young age ever since I got my first PC in 1998. My passion for technology grew quite exponentially with the times, and it has been an incredible experience from being a much solicited source for tech advice and troubleshooting among family and friends to joining Notebookcheck in 2017 as a professional tech journalist. Now, I am a Lead Editor at Notebookcheck covering news and reviews encompassing a wide gamut of the technology landscape for Indian and global audiences. When I am not hunting for the next big story or taking complex measurements for reviews, you can find me unwinding to a nice read, listening to some soulful music, or trying out a new game.
Vaidyanathan Subramaniam, 2023-10- 8 (Update: 2023-10- 8)