Vapor chamber tech keeps iPhone 17 Pro cool (spectrum.ieee.org)

I'm interested to see how many/few complaints we see about the iPhone Air overheating, since it has almost the exact same chip as the 17 Pro but a simpler cooling system

"My phone is really hot, is this normal or is it broken?!" is something I started getting asked by random iPhone-using friends over the last few years as they upgraded to a new model and then felt it sizzling.

Last night I encountered a 3 min+ ad on YT about the construction of the iPhone 17 Pro. A few seconds were devoted to the cooling system. I watched the whole thing. It was better than the video it interrupted.

https://youtu.be/_-AS5DtDeqs?si=rTfubRDArVupqREt

I have an iPhone Air now and have no complaints about the heating. The thinness is worth the occasional heat and throttle down. Every time I pick up this phone, it just feels fantastic!

Phone usage is getting more intense as we move from mere passive consumption to having them as creative (compute) device. "Heat" is sort of reflection of that.

I want to see more optimization to reduce the heat from both hardware as in this case and in software side as well. I guess it is easier to show enhancements about hardware made to address something such as heat or processing but comparatively difficult or abstract to show software optimizations?

I really hope this will land on MacBook Air M5. Enough for me to keep the me on Air rather than going Pro.

Why the emphasis on Apple when Samsung was there first?

It looks like the competition is making them sweat (pun intended).

Can this tech be used for EV batteries?

Not exactly brand new tech, but now on a mobile device without the long-term security baggage that often comes from using Android.

This is a heat pipe. A technology from the 60s. Your laptop almost certainly has heat pipes in it. They usually use alcohol rather than water as the phase change material though. The (relatively) novel thing is that it's packaged small enough to be in a phone. I suspect the only reason it hasn't been used in handhelds more is because the TDP of mobile processors wasn't high enough to warrant it.

Oppo uses these in some of their phones. They gave a factory tour to the "Know Art" Youtube channel, which made a good video on it: https://youtu.be/qAZ-q3KmDHM

Which most people are going to immediately cover with an insulating layer of plastic or silicone.

At least the heat will be spread out from one spot (and into the battery?). All phone makers are doing what they can within the design constraints.

Anyone noticed that the gradient pattern on the wallpaper says "PRO" if you look closely?

Pretty sure this is 99% a reaction to LLMs. On the older ones things get really spicy with even short on device LLM runs.

17th iteration in less than 20 years, billions produced. About a billion already 'obsolete'.

Seems fair to ask: what's the expected lifespan of an iPhone these days?

Does anyone here have insight as to what percent of materials used to make them is actually recycled?

> In Apple’s version, a small amount of deionized water is sealed in the chamber. […] Water is often used in vapor chambers, though sometimes other materials are mixed in to prevent it from freezing and cracking the seal, Chiriac says.

So Apple uses deionized water, while others add in some other chemicals to prevent it from freezing. So how will the new iPhone deal with freezing temperatures?

They must be struggling to hit their perf/w targets if this ended up being necessary.

These phones are not going to age well, the paste or thermal pads is not going to last. Larger sheets of graphene for full size processors and gpus are good for a decade, at this size it'll be lucky to get to 5.

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Razer Phone 2 laughs, 6 years ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGsICbmmfws

I still don't understand why massive cooling efforts are needed when most people are just sending messages and watching videos anyway. Your phone from 10 years ago could do that