Water cooling in computing hardware has been a common practice in high-performance systems for years. Though famous in the gaming space, these types of advanced coolers are also useful in workstations, where large computation loads can generate enormous amounts of heat. With phones getting faster and hotter, OnePlus has developed a system to bring this water-cooling system to mobiles.
While interesting as a concept, it’s not a system that you’ll need or one that works well, and here is why.
Beyond a Niche
Despite being powerful tools capable of a great many tasks, most of us use our mobiles for simple communication and fun. A common example of this is demonstrated by those who play blackjack online games at Paddy’s and other online casinos, which have been developed especially with great mobile versions. Titles like classic, Vegas, and Live Blackjack illustrate the most demand that most users will place on mobile phones, which isn’t much.
Because these have been developed to be as efficient as possible along with most websites and apps, they won’t push modern phones very hard and can be played perfectly well even on older devices.
From this starting point, the number of users who push phones to their absolute maximum is very small. Outside of gamers, mobile phones aren’t really used for any high-demand systems. If there is any sort of demanding processing to be done, desktop workstations can do it far better, and no phone is ever going to bridge that evolving gap.
Size, Heat, and Battery Life
The OnePlus 11 Concept phone featuring the “Active CryoFlux” system isn’t intended for a full release, which is probably just as well. At its core are the small series of tubes that look beautiful as seen from the back, but don’t work in real-life situations on practically any level.
Water cooling as a concept is based around a thermal medium, usually water, being attached to a processing unit like a CPU. This water is fed through a loop, which is pumped from the CPU to a large radiator, which disperses the heat. The cooler water then continues around the loop, continually lowering the temperature as long as the ability to transfer and cool isn’t overwhelmed by the heat from the processor.
Easier cooling systems for PCs come in the form of air-cooled systems. For these, a large metal heat-sync is attached directly on top of a processing unit, which passes heat directly via metal into a radiator. Intel describes in its breakdown that this radiator is then cooled by fans which blow air through it, and hopefully out of the case. Starting with small single fans, modern performance machines usually contain no less than four fans, which can only be used to their full effect with a specially designed case.
The simplest possible form of cooling is called passive cooling. This is also the type of cooling that almost every phone offers, except for some oddities like the Lenovo Legion. With passive coolers, no moving parts are included at all. Essentially, these work as air-cooled systems, only without the fans. This is only possible with systems that don’t create much heat, so they can disperse this heat without much issue.
Does the Technology Work for the OnePlus 11 Concept?
As a small phone, the OnePlus 11 Concept doesn’t create much heat. In addition, even provided an attached water-cooling system, the water only really circulates; it doesn’t radiate. Making a path through the back of the phone while lit up with lights looks cool, but it barely lets the water actually cool, which the OnePlus 11 Concept benchmarks reflect. It will still hit limits, which causes it to slow down through thermal throttling, so it’s not really off to a good start.
Even assuming that regular mobile uses like browsing, casino games, and video streams require more cooling, bigger coolers draw a lot of power. Combined with higher clock speeds that cause heating, such systems would significantly drain battery life to a non-usable level.
Make no mistake, the OnePlus 11 Concept is an interesting idea. It’s also a system that doesn’t really work on any level. Though future releases of phones may include water cooling officially, and even see better results for it, very few users will need it. Whether playing blackjack, watching YouTube, or reading the news, tradition is best, and that’s unlikely to change anytime soon.
Also read: Is It Worth Buying a Second-hand OnePlus 7 Pro in 2022?
