“For the first time ever, a vapor chamber on Galaxy Z Flip.” That’s the only mention of a vapor chamber cooling system inside the new Galaxy Z Flip 6 from Samsung in its press release. The on-stage presentation at the glitzy Unpacked event in Paris wasn’t too different either.
One might mistake this approach from Samsung as a relatively tame upgrade. In reality, it’s anything but. At the moment, a vapor chamber cooling kit is the most advanced and efficient kind of thermal management hardware inside a phone to handle the heat produced by a power-hungry battery and the battery while it is being charged or drained of power.
Some phones, like the Nubia Red Magic, even fit a small fan like a gaming laptop — but that’s a rare outlier case. The lack of a decent-quality thermal management kit can affect a phone’s performance in a tangible fashion. Look no further than the poor job done by Google on its Pixel phones, which have amassed infamy for running hot.
But it’s not just the unpleasant feeling of a hot glass slab hurting your palm that’s the problem here. Thermal throttling is a menace and it slows the entire system down. Warnings like “Device Cooling Down” on a phone’s screen aren’t just a benign system message.
It changes how you interact with your phone for a short spell. Those changes include dimming the screen, slower performance, and reduced or paused charging. While capturing high-resolution videos, I’ve often come across warnings telling me.
