The future of flagship smartphones or pointless feature?
In the world of smartphones, integrated fans are still more the exception than the rule. But as high-end SoCs become more powerful and generate more heat, better cooling is needed as well.
Traditionally, manufacturers rely on passive cooling in Android smartphones, using small heat pipes, vapor chambers, or graphite layers to dissipate heat. However, these methods reach their limits under very demanding workloads, as the 3DMark stress tests in our reviews repeatedly show. In some cases, current high-end phones throttle by more than 60 percent in relation to their maximum performance.
Fan in Vivo's gaming phone is no game changer
To keep performance stable even under sustained load, Vivo has equipped its current gaming flagship with a fan, with prices at TradingShenzhen starting at about $800. This is intended to create targeted airflow inside the device so heat can be dissipated faster than with a passive system, as used in its sister model.
The idea of integrating a fan into increasingly powerful gaming smartphones seems reasonable at first glance. However, we currently do not see any real everyday benefit in the iQOO 15 Ultra. In our review, the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 throttles quite noticeably, and the chassis temperatures are also far from low. We cannot test how much more severely the iQOO 15 Ultra would throttle without the fan, because the software detects benchmarks and automatically starts the fan.
For heavy users who genuinely use their smartphones extensively for gaming, external cooling systems are also an option. When needed, they can be attached to the back and likewise provide better cooling performance without the drawbacks of an integrated solution.
The built-in fan in the iQOO 15 Ultra also has some drawbacks. The gaming phone is fairly heavy, and its active cooling produces clearly audible fan noise, which is much more distracting on a smartphone at typical viewing distance than it would be on a laptop. For the fan to keep working properly over time, dust and dirt would also need to be removed.
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