The iPhone 17 series is expected to usher in a number of firsts for Apple, and one of the new steps will be installing a more robust cooling system in the largest and most expensive handset in the line.
According to reputed Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuothe iPhone 17 Pro Max will sport a vapor chamber as an additional passive cooling solution for the first time, instead of just graphite sheets as the rest of the iPhone gang.
Currently, Apple uses a combination of hardware and software cooling, such as heat dissipating graphite sheets, processor clock frequency throttling under continuous pressure, lowering the display brightness, and even shutting down the phone’s operation if needed.
Vapor chambers work on the heat pipe principle, providing a flat vacuum sealed enclosure with a small amount of fluid inside. When heat comes in contact with the finned sink attached to it, the fluid evaporates to condense in cooler areas, absorbing the heat. It then gets wicked back to the heat source in a never-ending cycle, keeping the system running in a more stable manner with less thermal throttling.
Adding a vapor chamber will allow the iPhone 17 Pro Max to stay cool under pressure for longer, and might be a harbinger of things to come for its Apple A19 series processor. The Apple A18 Pro chipset that will be powering the iPhone 16 Pro Max is already rumored to pierce the 4 GHz clock speed barrier, so Apple might be cooking something even faster and more powerful for the flagship 2025 iPhone.
Apple is preparing to release the iPhone 16 series with one and the same processor series across the lineup, something it hasn’t done for a while. It will still find a way to fragment the regular from the Pro models in terms of processing power, though. The A18 chip for the iPhone 16 will reportedly sport a smaller cache size and one less graphic processing core than the A18 Pro in the iPhone 16 Pro Max.
