Which iPhone for Honor of Kings? The 13–17 guide

Which iPhone for Honor of Kings? The 13–17 guide

Published: 27 September 2026

⚠️ Scope — read this first

The adaptation data below concerns the mainland-China client of Honor of Kings (Tencent's directly operated version).

This article does not cover the international client (published by Level Infinite), which is the version you play in France. Its device list may differ, and its seasons do not necessarily follow the same schedule. We found no public data on the international client's list — check the in-game options on your own device before buying.

Which version you play may change the answer.

Frame-rate tiers and the models supported change with each season update. Prices were checked on 2026-09-27; each adaptation claim carries its own observation date (see the end of this article).

Many people upgrade in order to game, but the question they ask is usually "which generation has enough chip".

The chip is usually not the bottleneck. The A15 in the iPhone 13 is still enough for Honor of Kings today. What actually shapes the experience is three things: whether the screen supports a high refresh rate, whether the game opens 120 fps for that model, and whether thermals can sustain it over time.

This article is built around those three points.

The short answer

In one line: 120 fps has to pass two gates — the screen must support a high refresh rate, and the game must open the option for that model; after both gates, whether it holds steady comes down to thermals.

The 13–16 standard and Plus models stop at the first gate (a 60 Hz hardware ceiling); the 13–16 Pro models and the 17 standard pass both, but with very different opening dates; the iPhone Air has 120 Hz but, as of the public testing available on 2026-04-01, stops at the second gate.

Limit one: 120 fps needs more than a capable screen — the game has to open it

This is the most widely misunderstood part, and most explanations online collapse it into one of two things — either "the screen decides" or "the chip decides". Neither is complete.

The accurate model is two gates, plus a sustaining condition:

The first gate is physics, and there is no way around it — a 60 Hz screen draws 60 frames a second, and that is that.

But the second gate exists independently: having a 120 Hz screen does not mean having 120 fps.

The iPhone Air is the clearest example

The iPhone Air has the same 120 Hz ProMotion screen as the 17 Pro — but as of the public testing available on 2026-04-01, it has no "Extreme" frame-rate option in the game.

It is not greyed out and unselectable — the option does not exist.

⚠️ The observation date for this is 2026-04-01. IT之家 published a screenshot of the Air's in-game settings page that day, under the headline that the Air appears to have been "forgotten"; PChome reported the same day that Air users "can only choose between the 30 fps power-saving and 60 fps high tiers". We found no later official adaptation announcement from Tencent before this article's deadline (2026-09-27), so "the Air is still not open" is an observation from 1 April, not a September measurement. Before buying, go by the game version you have at the time.

Note what this chain of evidence proves and what it does not. It proves that the Air had no such option in the game at that time. It does not prove why Tencent left it out — we have no data on the actual decision taken on the game side. The industry habitually calls this a "model whitelist", but that is a colloquialism, not an official term.

⚠️ A separate question: being selectable is not the same as being locked in

Above we looked at whether the option exists. There is another independent question: even if you select 120 fps, does it necessarily run at 120 Hz?

No. Apple's own documentation supports this (an independent chain from the Air evidence above; the two cannot be used to corroborate each other). From "Optimizing iPhone and iPad apps to support ProMotion displays":

The system insulates the ProMotion display's actual refresh rate from your app — you can't force a ProMotion display to show your content at any specific rate.

So even the game itself can only express a preference, not lock it down — the same document also states that ProMotion switches dynamically "between 10 Hz and 120 Hz". That is why "Extreme" is a ceiling rather than a guarantee, and why there is a third gate (thermals).

Two pieces of evidence

① The same 120 Hz, three different outcomes

The entire iPhone 17 range launched in September 2025 with 120 Hz on all four models, but:

All three support up to 120 Hz, yet the tiers available in-game differ. So "having a 120 Hz screen" is not by itself enough to guarantee a 120 fps option.

⚠️ But you cannot say "it has nothing to do with the hardware". The 17, 17 Pro and Air have different GPUs, bodies and thermals, and we have no data to judge Tencent's specific criteria for opening each model. All that can be concluded here is: 120 Hz is not a sufficient condition.

② The iPad Pro precedent: it can be closed and reopened

In June 2021 Tencent closed the iPad Pro's "Super" option (90 fps, not 120 fps), and did not open "Extreme" (120 fps) until June 2024 (S36). IT之家 reported that the reason given officially at the time was a "grey-scale performance test" — that is a paraphrase, not a formal Tencent announcement.

A feature that can be switched off by policy and switched back on three years later shows that the second gate is decided on the game side, not by chip capability.

In-game frame-rate tiers (iOS)

On iOS the maximum is "Extreme" = 120 fps.

Opening dates by model

⚠️ A practical warning: 120 fps and maximum image quality are an either/or.

The in-game settings screen states: "Extreme frame rate mode cannot currently be used at the same time as Ultra Canyon image quality and HDR effects quality". Choose Ultra image quality and the frame rate is locked lower. A few Android models are exempt; we found no reliable record of an iPhone being exempt.

⚠️ The list changes. The historical dates in the table are season announcement dates; "still not open" is an observation at a point in time, not a guarantee. Every season update may add models or adjust settings. Before buying, it is best to confirm with a user of the same model, or to check the actual in-game option.

Limit two: thermals decide whether it throttles

Reaching a high frame rate at the start is not hard; the hard part is what happens after twenty minutes.

Note: thermals and battery life are two different things. This section is about whether the frame rate drops (thermals); how long you can play (battery) is the next section.

A phone heats up when gaming, and an overheating chip throttles — the smoothness you see at the start is not what you will get for a whole match. So what really has to be compared is sustained performance.

Thermal design

Within the 13 to 17 generations covered here, the 17 Pro / Pro Max are the only models with a vapour chamber. Apple also changed back from the 16 Pro's titanium to unibody aluminium, and both changes bear on thermals.

The iPhone Air is confirmed to have no vapour chamber (teardown confirmation). As for why it does not, and what replaces it, the circulating claims come from unreliable sources and we make no assertion here.

⚠️ Getting the vapour chamber's effect right

Apple claims the 17 Pro's sustained performance is "up to 40 %" higher than the previous generation. Third-party stress tests give a more complicated picture than "did it reach 40 %".

Two things have to be separated:

• The 17 Pro still throttles heavily — one third party recorded a performance drop of about 39 % in a 3DMark stress test, comparable to the 16 generation
• But the 17 Pro Max's sustained throughput still beats the 16 Pro Max — the same set of tests shows it about 50 % higher in the first round, and its final round still better than the 16 Pro Max's peak

So on thermals, the accurate statement is: the 17 Pro still gets hot enough to throttle, but the 17 Pro Max does more at the same temperature than the previous generation.

Do not expect the 17 Pro to stay cool when gaming — it gets just as hot, but does more at the same heat.

(Sources at the end: Tom's Guide, 3DMark Wild Life Extreme stress test.)

16 Pro / Pro Max: sustained load and temperature measurements

These are concrete measurements, not rumours. Chaping (X.PIN), via The Paper (2024-10-04), ran Honkai: Star Rail for 30 minutes:

• iPhone 16 Pro: 47.8 °C on the back, 42.9 °C on the front
• Apple claimed a 20 % sustained gaming performance gain for the 16 Pro at the time. That outlet measured only +0.1 fps against the 15 Pro, in a single game — a single game under a single set of conditions is not enough to overturn Apple's overall claim, but it shows how far an official percentage can be from what one game actually feels like.
• Around the same period, 16 Pro Max users also reported: display brightness reduced, a black screen for several minutes, charging paused

To be fair: Apple's support document on iPhone operating temperatures explicitly lists dimmed brightness, a black screen, throttling and paused charging as designed overheat protection, and notes an operating ambient temperature of 0–35 °C. This is behaviour, not a defect — but if gaming is your main use, it is part of the real experience you have to count.

Why are thicker phones usually better? A larger body means potentially more room to dissipate heat. But that is only a structurally favourable condition, not a guarantee — actual performance also depends on the internal design, power draw and the manufacturer's tuning. Within the same generation of chip, the Pro Max generally lasts longer than the small model, but you cannot conclude from size alone.

⚠️ Two downsides, stated plainly

A gaming buying guide should not only list the upsides. These two points affect your actual experience:

① Touch latency — in both sets of tests, the iPhone was slower than the Android flagships in the same group

⚠️ You cannot generalise to "every iPhone loses at every game". The two sets of tests used different games, different models and different methods; all that can be said is that under the conditions of these two tests, the iPhones tested had higher touch latency than the Android flagships in the same group.

② The first 120 fps marketing figures were measured in "custom mode"

When 120 fps opened for the iPhone 13 Pro / 14 Pro in 2022, the impressive numbers in the launch coverage came from custom mode only. The original reviewer wrote:

"This test was in custom mode only; frame rates in 5v5 matchmaking / ranked games should drop further as large numbers of skills are used."

Going back through that batch of coverage, PConline's news channel version deleted that sentence (PConline's own original version the same day kept it). Another review noted that the iPhone 13 Pro "struggles to hold 120 fps, sitting mostly between 70 and 90 fps", even with the phone cold.

This is why this article does not publish a table of measured frame rates. Test conditions differ far too much between sources (custom mode vs real matches, image-quality settings, room temperature, device age), and putting them side by side in a table would mislead.

Limit three: battery life decides how long you can play

The previous section covered thermals — whether the frame rate drops. This one covers the battery — how long you can play.

They are different things: a phone can hold its clock the whole way through and still be flat in two hours.

First, the most misread thing: the "hours" on the spec sheet are not gaming hours

You see "iPhone 17: 30 hours" on the spec sheet — that is Apple's official video playback figure, not gaming time.

Gaming is roughly one third of that number.

We checked GSMArena's standardised test (same 3D game, locked 60 Hz, 200 nits, aeroplane mode) against Apple's official figures:

All 12 devices fall between 31 % and 41 %, with no exceptions. So you can use it like this: a spec sheet that says 30 hours means roughly 10 hours of gaming.

⚠️ This ratio is our own arithmetic, not an official statement from any organisation, and it is a cross-source comparison — the Apple side is local video playback, the GSMArena side is a 60 Hz 3D game; the two are different activities. Use it as a rough guide, not as a precise calculation.

Which "battery life" figure is used in the spec tables below?

All of them are Apple's rated "video playback". Apple publishes a separate "video streaming" figure for the same model, which is lower — this article uses video playback throughout its tables, so the rows are comparable:

(The French 17 Pro / 17 Pro Max are rated at 31 / 37 hours of video playback, the eSIM-only US versions at 33 / 39 hours; we did not obtain their streaming figures.)

⚠️ Two things to be clear about, because they directly affect how you compare:

① Apple does not publish the detailed test conditions on its spec pages (brightness, network, volume, etc.), and we could not obtain the footnote describing its test conditions. So these figures can only be compared within one manufacturer and one metric; they cannot be compared directly against third-party numbers such as GSMArena's or Xiao Bai Reviews'.

② The same label does not mean the same procedure. The 13 generation (2021) and the 17 generation (2025) both label their figures "video playback", but Apple has in fact adjusted how it measures over those five years (adding "video streaming" as a metric, for example). We could not verify whether the test procedure is consistent across generations, so keep a margin when comparing across generations.

Same-generation comparison: the big phone wins, but the best one is not the Pro Max

In the same GSMArena test, under the same conditions, gaming battery life within a generation:

Three findings:

① The big phone wins clearly. The 15 Plus lasts 27 % longer than the 15, the 16 Plus 21 % longer than the 16, and the 17 Pro Max 15 % longer than the 17. The bigger screen does not eat the bigger battery.

② But the Pro is not the best of its generation — in both generations it loses to the standard model. The 16 Pro (8:26) loses to the 16 (8:53); the 17 Pro (10:14) loses to the 17 (10:32). The smaller body has worse thermals, so over a long run it loses out.

③ Most surprising: the Plus beats the Pro Max, and the smaller battery beats the bigger one.

The Plus beat the Pro Max in both generations.

If what you want is "play longest" rather than "highest frame rate" → choose the Plus over the Pro Max (GSMArena's measurements in both generations show this; we have no data to judge the cause).

But the Plus is 60 Hz and cannot reach 120 fps (see "Limit one") — so this is what you have to choose between: 120 fps or longer sessions, and you cannot have both.

Game for Peace: data for the iPhone 13 / 14 generations

GSMArena's test does not cover the 13 / 14 generations. Those have another set: Phoenix Lab (2022-09-30), using a "run-to-death" model, the last stage being Game for Peace (HDR HD + Super frame rate), 350 nits, 25 °C, Wi-Fi.

⚠️ This is the total for "5 hours of mixed use + Game for Peace until it dies", not pure gaming time. It cannot be read as "9 hours of Game for Peace".

⚠️ "Super frame rate" is not 60 fps. Game for Peace's tiers are: High 30 / Super 40 / Extreme 60, with separate 90 fps and 120 fps tiers. This set ran HDR + 40 fps.

But it is valid for comparing models within the same generation: the 13 Pro Max lasted 1 hour 47 minutes longer than the 13; the 14 Pro Max 1 hour 07 minutes longer than the 14. That matches GSMArena's conclusion — the big phone really does win.

One more separate figure: an iPhone 13 Pro Max playing Game for Peace drew 11 % an hour (100 % brightness, 24 °C, aeroplane mode, Wi-Fi; the frame rate and image quality were not stated, so it cannot be treated as a 60 fps figure).

120 fps power draw — the direction is certain, but nobody has published a magnitude

To be straight about this: we could not find a single measurement of the same device and the same game at 60 fps vs 120 fps.

In Chinese or in English. So this article will not give you a "120 fps costs X % more" figure — the "30 % more" circulating online comes from an AI-generated content-farm page, whose own two figures on the same page contradict each other.

What we do have is directional evidence:

• GSMArena's methodology page states outright that high-refresh gaming means "up to 50% shorter runtimes" — an editorial estimate, not a measurement, which is why their game test deliberately locks 60 Hz
• Xiao Bai Reviews, re-testing the iPhone 16 Pro Max, found that after switching Honor of Kings from "60 fps + Ultra image quality" to "120 fps + HD image quality", "power consumption increased somewhat" — a direction only, with no magnitude, and the image quality and the iOS version were changed at the same time, so two variables moved together
• 3elife measured that the body temperature rose noticeably with Honor of Kings at 120 fps, while Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail showed no big difference at 120 fps — that is, Honor of Kings is particularly sensitive to a high refresh rate

Conclusion: 120 fps is an option you pay for in battery. We will not put a figure on how much, but the direction is clear — and the fact that GSMArena would rather lock 60 Hz than deal with it suggests it is not a small number.

One more practical data point: Xiao Bai Reviews, testing the iPhone 17 range in September 2025, noted that "the 17 series has only 60 fps for Game for Peace and Honor of Kings for now" — that is, both games were locked to 60 fps when the 17 range launched, and 120 fps came later through an iOS update.

Hardware by model

What to look at in these tables: the "refresh rate" column — the 60 Hz of the 13–16 standard models is exactly why they cannot reach 120 fps (the 17 standard is already 120 Hz).

Prices checked on 2026-09-27 (entry price for the lowest grade of each model), they move daily — re-check before buying.

iPhone 13 family (2021)

iPhone 14 family (2022)

The 14 standard uses the 13 Pro's chip — A15 with a 5-core GPU and 6 GB — but its screen drops back to 60 Hz. From a gaming point of view, the 14 standard is "a Pro's chip without a Pro's screen".

iPhone 15 family (2023)

iPhone 16 family (2024)

iPhone 17 family (2025)

On the 17 family: the range is recent, so this table gives observed French refurbished market ranges (256 GB, September 2026) rather than entry prices for a lowest grade. The 17 series went on sale in September 2025; the 17 Pro and the 17 Pro Max have since left the Apple France catalogue, so new units are limited to what resellers still hold.

The "battery" column in this table is Apple's official video playback figure, not gaming time (see "Limit three").

The French figures differ from the US ones — the French 17 Pro / 17 Pro Max keep the physical SIM tray and are officially rated at 31 / 37 hours; the eSIM-only US versions are 33 / 39 hours.

All four models in the 17 range are 120 Hz — the biggest difference from the previous four generations. Within the 13 to 17 generations covered here, the 17 Pro / 17 Pro Max are also the only models with a vapour chamber.

How to read these tables:

• GPU core count stopped being the bottleneck from the 13 generation onward — even the 13's 4-core A15 is enough for Honor of Kings. The real dividing lines are refresh rate, what the game opens, and thermals
• Hardware ray tracing (from the 15 Pro) does nothing for Honor of Kings — the game does not use it. It only counts if you want to play other games that support it
• The 14 standard is a trap: the same chip as the 13 Pro, but a 60 Hz screen, so it cannot reach 120 fps in Honor of Kings
• 12 GB of memory (17 Pro / Air) gives little immediate benefit in Honor of Kings, but if you habitually leave games in the background and reply to messages mid-match, more is better
• The Air's A19 Pro is the 5-core GPU version, one GPU core short of the 17 Pro (not a downclock — a different core count), and with no vapour chamber, if 120 fps and sustained high-load performance are your priority, the Air is not this article's recommended pick

⚠️ Two points about the numbers:

① No battery mAh figures are listed — Apple never publishes iPhone battery capacity, the numbers circulating come from teardowns and regulatory databases, and sources disagree. What is listed is official video playback hours, which can be compared with each other.

② The RAM figures are not published by Apple — they come from Xcode and third-party teardowns, and are background only.

While we are here: how do the Plus models game?

The Plus is "big body, big battery, but 60 Hz" — whether that suits you depends on whether you accept 60 fps.

Conclusion:

• If you accept 60 fps → the Plus is theoretically better suited to long sessions: a larger body, potentially more room to dissipate heat, and a longer battery (we found no same-generation measurements to support this)
• If you want 120 fps → the Plus cannot help you, you need a Pro
• We have no observed entry price for the 14 Plus, so the table above leaves it blank; the 16 Plus is no longer in Apple's lineup, so if you want a larger body, look at the 15 Plus or the 14 Plus

Note: from the 17 generation onward Apple no longer makes a Plus, and the iPhone Air takes its place. But the Air is a 5.64 mm ultra-thin body with no vapour chamber, which is a different set of priorities for gaming — the Plus leans towards a large body, while the Air clearly leans towards thinness and portability rather than sustained high-load performance.

Price vs gaming experience: a counter-intuitive conclusion

If you want 120 fps cheaply, the answer is the iPhone 13 Pro, not a newer standard model.

The 16 standard costs about 231 € more, yet its maximum display frame rate is lower than the cheaper 13 Pro — the 16 standard is 60 Hz, the 13 Pro is 120 Hz. (Note that the 13 Pro likewise cannot lock 120 fps down; see the third gate above.)

⚠️ The ✅ in the table means only "the 120 fps tier can be selected in-game". That is a ceiling, not a guarantee. Real 5v5 matches drop frames as skills fire and team fights grow — the public measurements available are not enough to guarantee that any iPhone holds 120 fps for a whole match under all real 5v5 conditions, image qualities and environments.

But this does not mean the 13 Pro is always better than the 16. The 16 has a newer chip, longer software support, a better camera and 8 GB of memory. If gaming is only one of your uses, a standard model still makes sense; but if 120 fps is a hard requirement for you, the 13 Pro is the cheapest answer.

What to check on a second-hand gaming phone

Gaming is the most demanding thing you can do with a phone, so the checks should be targeted.

① Battery health — gaming draws the most power

Settings → Battery → Battery Health & Charging. Gaming means high draw and high heat, and a battery with low health will make throttling appear sooner. Below 80 %, factor the cost of a replacement into the price.

Apple France battery replacement (out of warranty):

(The Apple France battery figure is the same across our 14, 15 and 16 guides. Third-party replacement is separate: around 59–89 € on the 13 family.)

Put this straight into your negotiation — on an iPhone 13 whose entry price is 189 €, an official replacement at 135–149 € is roughly 70–80 % of the phone's price.

② Sustained-load test — especially on the 16 Pro / Pro Max

There is no reliable way to judge a used phone's "overheating history", so test it directly: play a match and watch where the body heats up and how fast it throttles — do not just power it on and glance at it.

③ Screen and touch — it directly affects gameplay

Honor of Kings is a touch-heavy game, and a faulty screen means you cannot play at all. Check on a plain white or grey background at low brightness for colour shifts or lines, then test multi-touch in practice. See screen and camera function checks.

④ Version — do not buy the wrong regional model

Different regional versions differ in their physical SIM and eSIM support, and your game account and server region have to match. Before buying, check against the specific model number (Settings → General → About → Model Number), your account region and your carrier's requirements.

⑤ Capacity — this game takes up space

Honor of Kings' install package plus its asset files take up a lot, and with other games and photos, 128 GB fills up fast. If gaming is the main use, go for 256 GB or more.

Further reading

Full reviews of a single generation: iPhone 17 range | 16 | 15 | 14 | 13

Choosing across generations: 13–16 cross-generation comparison (the 17 range is not included)

Budget first: Which iPhone for €400?

What the grades mean: grade guide

Sources and notes

Where each figure comes from

The Apple figures in the spec tables for the 13 / 14 / 15 / 16 Pro were read from Apple's own pages via Wayback archives — Apple has 301-redirected those pages to the current models, so the originals can no longer be opened directly.

This article's core argument — "120 fps has to pass two gates, the screen and the game, and after that it comes down to whether thermals can sustain it" — rests on the following:

• The iPhone Air has no "Extreme frame rate" option — two outlets reported the same event on 2026-04-01, not two independent sets of testing: IT之家, Tencent's Honor of Kings finally opens 120 fps mode for the iPhone 17 standard after six months, but the Air appears to have been "forgotten"; PChome, Honor of Kings opens 120 fps for the iPhone 17 standard; the Air still not adapted. Both are dated 2026-04-01 and are media reports / in-game screenshots, not official Tencent announcements.
• The opening-date table by model — this table is compiled from media reports and players' in-game screenshots, not from a Tencent official announcement (we found no Tencent public page supporting all the dates at once). 13 Pro / 14 Pro on 2022-09-22 (S29), 16 Pro / Pro Max on 2024-09-25 (S37), 17 standard on 2026-04-01 (S43). Each item is "media report / in-game measurement".
• ProMotion cannot be forced to a given refresh rate — Apple's official developer documentation, Optimizing iPhone and iPad apps to support ProMotion displays, quoted above; the same document's ProMotion device list includes "iPhone 17 and later".
• The iPad Pro precedent (closed in 2021, opened in 2024) — what was closed in June 2021 was "Super" (90 fps), and "Extreme" (120 fps) was not opened until June 2024, in S36: IT之家, After 3 years, Tencent's Honor of Kings once again opens the Extreme frame rate for iPad Pro models (2024-06-26). The "grey-scale performance test" account is IT之家's paraphrase of the official reason, not Tencent's own announcement text.
• The triple-buffering explanation is not adopted — it is sometimes claimed that iPhone touch latency comes from "Metal defaulting to triple buffering". Checking Apple's official documentation, Understanding hitches in your app, the text reads:
  • "Most Apple devices operate in a double-buffer mode";
  • "One of the reasons the system may switch to triple buffering is to recover from a render hitch";
  • "The system can also use the triple-buffer mode during regular operation for various reasons, such as to save energy … or when a specific use case needs more time to render".
  
  So "triple buffering is not the default" holds, but it cannot be reduced to "it is only a hitch-recovery mode". The material available is not sufficient to support the causal claim that "Metal's default triple buffering causes touch latency" — the cause of the touch latency has no official explanation at present.
• Frame-rate tiers and image quality are mutually exclusive — ZOL, Honor of Kings' 120 fps is about to launch: these three models first (2021-09-09) reports the in-game settings screen as showing: "Extreme frame rate mode cannot currently be used at the same time as Ultra Canyon image quality and HDR effects quality", and states on the same page that "in Extreme frame rate mode, image quality can be opened up to HD at most". This sentence is text from the game's settings screen, reported by media; we found no original Tencent announcement text.
• Thermals and sustained performance (17 generation) — Apple Newsroom (2025-09-09) officially claims "up to 40 %". Third parties:
  • Tom's Guide (2025-09-17), 3DMark Wild Life Extreme stress test, two 20-minute rounds: 17 Pro Max stability 65.2 % → 68.4 %, 16 Pro Max 54.7 % → 67.7 %, iPhone Air 65.1 % → 58.8 % (the only one falling throughout); surface temperature 17 Pro Max 100.66 °F vs 16 Pro Max 101.12 °F.
  • Notebookcheck (2025-09-18), citing The Tech Chap's test: 17 Pro down 38.7 %, 17 Pro Max down 28 %, throttling comparable to the 16 generation; but the 17 Pro Max was 50.5 % higher than the 16 Pro Max in the first round, and its final round still beat the 16 Pro Max's peak.
  • iFixit (2025-09-23): the 17 Pro held at 34.8 °C, the 16 Pro Max began throttling at an external temperature of 37.8 °C.
  
  So the accurate statement is "the 17 Pro still gets hot enough to throttle, but the 17 Pro Max does more work at the same temperature than the previous generation" — not "third parties could not reproduce the 40 %".
• 16 Pro overheating measurements — Chaping (X.PIN), via The Paper, After tearing down four new iPhones, I suggest Apple take a lesson from Chinese manufacturers on cooling (2024-10-04), a 30-minute Honkai: Star Rail test: 16 Pro at 47.8 °C on the back and 42.9 °C on the front; removing the graphite film took it from 57.8 fps down to 48.2 fps; Apple claimed +20 % sustained performance, and the measured average was only 0.1 fps above the 15 Pro.
• Touch latency —
  • Honor of Kings, 7-phone comparison: Xiao Bai Reviews, Xiao Bai Reviews database 5.0 update… (2025-08-10) — iPhone 16 Pro Max 61.4 ms, the slowest; fastest was the Honor Magic7 RSR at 25.6 ms.
  • Game for Peace, 44-phone comparison: Geekerwan, "Big mobile gaming performance round-up". ⚠️ The original video (Bilibili, 2026-02-15) was taken down on 2026-02-22, so this article cites secondary reports instead: KOCPC (2026-02-18), Geekerwan test methodology analysis (2026-03-07) — the entire iPhone 17 range at around 60 ms, last, Android flagships around 35 ms.
• Battery replacement costs — the Apple France out-of-warranty prices used here come from the repair tables in our French series guides (13, 14, 15, 16 and 17), which in turn cite the Apple France rate card and independent repairers' rate cards. ⚠️ These are rate-card figures reproduced from those guides rather than a live reading of Apple's repair-pricing page, so treat them as reported rather than current.
• The custom-mode caveat — MyDrivers, Honor of Kings season S29 goes live: 120 fps mode opens for the iPhone 13 Pro / 14 Pro series (2022-09-22), original text: "It should be noted that this test was in custom mode only; frame rates in 5v5 matchmaking / ranked games should drop further as large numbers of skills are used." It was PConline's news channel version that removed this sentence (PConline's own original version the same day kept it); what IT之家 published that day was a different piece that never contained it.

Sources for the battery-life section

• Gaming battery life per model — GSMArena, Battery life test results v2.0 and its methodology page (2023-11-08; table read on 2026-09-28). Conditions: 200 nits full white, location on, aeroplane mode, Wi-Fi, volume 15 %, locked 60 Hz, SmartViser automation. The game is not named (officially described as "a popular 3D game with a high GPU load"), and the test does not cover the iPhone 13 / 14.
• Apple official battery-life figures (video playback / video streaming) — Apple's tech-spec pages by model (current pages for the 17 / Air / 16; for the 13 / 14 / 15 / 16 Pro, read from Apple's own pages via Wayback archives, as Apple has 301-redirected them). ⚠️ Apple's spec pages do not list the test conditions, and we could not obtain the footnote describing them; the table above can only be used to compare within one manufacturer and one metric.
• Game for Peace (iPhone 13 / 14 generations) — Phoenix Lab, "iPhone 14 full-range battery test, really a negative optimisation? | One more point vol.9" (2022-09-30), read via a Baidu landing-page copy; we could not find a first-party ifeng URL, so this is a syndicated copy. Conditions: 350 nits, 25 °C, Wi-Fi, HDR HD + Super frame rate (40 fps).
• Game for Peace power draw (11 %/h) — the NetEase account "Bejingbuwang" (2022-07-18). A self-published account, not an established lab; conditions: 100 % brightness, 100 % volume, Wi-Fi, 24 °C, aeroplane mode; the frame rate and image quality were not stated, so it cannot be treated as a 60 fps figure.
• iPhone 17 range battery life — Xiao Bai Reviews (2025-09-18, via a NetEase syndication). Database 5.0 model: 25 °C ± 0.5, 350 nits, robotic-arm operation.
• 120 fps power-draw direction — GSMArena's methodology page (as above, an editorial estimate); Xiao Bai Reviews via Sohu / ITBEAR (2024-10-13); 3elife, "iPhone 15 Plus / 15 Pro Max comprehensive review: performance" (2023-10-20, temperature only, no power figures).

⚠️ The "120 fps costs 30 % more" figure is not adopted in this article. It comes from a CSDN content-farm page that describes itself as a "professional intelligent creation assistant", i.e. AI-generated, whose two figures on the same page ("20–40 %" and "around 30 %") contradict each other, with no model and no test conditions.

A few points to keep in mind:

• ⚠️ This article deliberately does not publish a table of measured frame rates. Test conditions differ far too much between sources (custom mode vs real matches, image-quality settings, room temperature, device age), and putting them together in a table would mislead. In particular, the 120 fps figures from the 13 / 14 Pro launch were measured in custom mode; real 5v5 play will be noticeably lower.
• ⚠️ No model has an absolute power measurement at a 120 fps tier. Every hard number was measured at a 60 fps tier, and they cannot be compared directly.
• ⚠️ The game-side whitelist changes with each season, and every item here carries its observation date. The historical opening dates in the table are season announcement dates; the "still not open" iPhone Air is an observation from 2026-04-01. Before buying, it is best to confirm with a user of the same model, or to check the actual in-game option.
• Apple's support document on iPhone operating temperatures explicitly lists dimmed brightness, a black screen, throttling and paused charging as designed overheat protection, with an operating ambient temperature of 0–35 °C. This is behaviour, not a defect.
• What cooling material the iPhone Air uses: the circulating claims come from unreliable sources, and this article makes no assertion. All that is confirmed is that it has no vapour chamber, and that it was the first model to throttle in the measurements.
• Prices are French market readings from September 2026, entry price for the lowest grade of each model, moving daily — re-check before buying.
• The memory figures are not published by Apple — they come from Xcode and third-party teardowns, and are background only.