OnePlus 11 Concept demos new cooling tech for smartphones

Image: OnePlus

OnePlus doesn't have a new phone to show off at Mobile World Congress 2023 in Barcelona, but it did have a new concept. The OnePlus 11 Concept phone shows off what active cooling technology looks like on a smartphone. It sports an Active CryoFlux design that you can see off the back of the phone, reminiscent of cooling pipes you'll see on PC rigs. 

What this does for the phone is it reduces the temperature up to 2.1℃, improving the frame rate by three or four frames per second during gameplay. When charging, it also brings down the temp by 1.6℃, which shaves off 30 to 45 seconds from the charging time.

This state-of-the-art Active CryoFlux functions with the industrial-grade ceramic piezoelectric micropumps at the center, connected to pipelines sandwiched between an upper and lower diaphragm. The micropump takes up an area of less than 0.2cm2, enabling the liquid to circulate the pipelines without significantly increasing a phone’s weight and thickness.

It leaves the OnePlus 11 Concept with a distinctive design, too. It has a glass unibody with deeply curved sides for a thinner bezel and a side pull-up height of 5.04mm. The rear cover shows off the micro-liquid flowing through the pipelines. And the look is completed with a magnetron-sputtering coating where metal and alloy are deposited in tiny amounts onto the case using an electric field.

This same look carries over to the camera lens, with the icy-cold Active CryoFlux liquid flowing through the camera in a halo. The lens area is surrounded by Guilloché etching to create an intricate pattern. It's a design of several luxury timepieces sport.

OnePlus doesn't plan to release the OnePlus 11 Concept, but it will potentially bring this technology to future smartphones.