So OnePlus revealed their OnePlus 11 Concept the other day here in Barcelona just in time for MWC.
The “Concept” is simple yet ground-breaking and follows the same principle as in PC cooling solutions that are pretty normal these days. Basically, OnePlus miniaturized the whole PC cooling setup and made it more aestethically appealing for smartphones.
Liquid-cooling is also not really new to smartphones. A lot of other brands have introduced vapor-cooling technology in their smartphones (like vivo or Xiaomi) but all of them are still passive-cooling in a sense.
Smartphone Vapor Chambers are designed as flat vacuum-sealed metal canisters filled with a small amount of liquid. As the phone heats up, the liquid turns into gas, cools, and condenses. At that time, the liquid travels back to the heat source through a secondary channel.
Others like the ASUS ROG and the Lenovo Legion have been using active cooling in their smartphones but those are mostly using an external fan to draw away hot air from the device.
It would seem that OnePlus is combining these two features into an active liquid cooling mechanism. That why you will see that specially-formulated liquid constantly flowing thru the transparent pipes at the back of the device and around the rings of the camera module.
This one-minute video from OnePlus somewhat gives a better picture of what is happening inside the smartphone.
According to OnePlus, the cooling solution can reduce temperatures of the smartphone by up to 2.1℃, which they claim can provide 3fps to 4fps of additional frames per second in mobile gameplay.
Active CryoFlux can also allegedly bring the temperature down when charging by 1.6℃, roughly shaving off 30-45 seconds from the charging time. The 1-minute increase might not be huge but consider that the OnePlus 11 can go from 0 – 50% in just 10 minutes so Active Cryoflux can potentially shave that time down to 9 minutes (or a 10% increase in charging speed).
Lastly, the Active Cryoflux technology is merely just a “concept” at the moment, which may or may not be implemented in future OnePlus smartphones. By then, it’s likely OnePlus is able to improve the cooling effect and reduce the over-all footprint of the technology.
Besides, that glowing flow of liquid at the back is kind of cool already on its own.
