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Vapor chamber tech keeps iPhone 17 Pro cool

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Re: Vapor chamber tech keeps iPhone 17 Pro cool

#91
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Samsung is not Apple. Relatively no one cares about Samsung outside Korea.

I think you are exaggerating how much people care about apple outside US. Apple is popular but Samsung, Xiaomi etc are also very dominant in other markets.

I'm not US based, you have no idea what you're talking about.

Market share is not what matters. When an S30 comes out, nobody cares. When a new iPhone comes out, my mother asks me about it.

This is why you're seeing a lot of people talking about something that Samsung did first.

Re: Vapor chamber tech keeps iPhone 17 Pro cool

#92
post #55
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Watching that video, the first thought I have is "So much engineering and I still need to buy a phone case with my new phone?" I'm guessing phone cases are still pretty much required if you drop your phone once or twice a month onto cement/asphalt/marble/etc from pocket height. I would be really curious to hear the internal debate at Apple wrt design tradeoffs + durability. E.g. how much of the iPhone design is only…

The titanium iPhones, at least, are nearly impervious to scratches when dropped on concrete or asphalt from a reasonable height. I “scientifically” test this pretty often. Because the iPhone 15 pro was significantly lighter than previous pro models, I wanted to avoid a case to get the most out of this improvement. However, I wouldn’t have even experimented with not using a case if it weren’t for the applecare+ plans…

Phones 20 years ago didn’t have expansive glass-covered screens. The biggest I had (blackberry curve) was fairly plasticky and quite sturdy, when dropped it might sometimes eject the battery compartment cover but otherwise survived in perfect working order. And of course Nokias were almost indestructible.

Re: Vapor chamber tech keeps iPhone 17 Pro cool

#93
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Usually it is sign for stability and usefulness if Apple adapts it. They rarely add something very new for mass production.

Heat pipes and vapour chambers are older than Apple

I think miniaturizing it to fit into a modern cellphone adds a few complexities that make it pretty different from the heat pipes and vapor chambers that existed in the 70s.

Re: Vapor chamber tech keeps iPhone 17 Pro cool

#94
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Watching that video, the first thought I have is "So much engineering and I still need to buy a phone case with my new phone?" I'm guessing phone cases are still pretty much required if you drop your phone once or twice a month onto cement/asphalt/marble/etc from pocket height. I would be really curious to hear the internal debate at Apple wrt design tradeoffs + durability. E.g. how much of the iPhone design is only…

Cases aren’t necessary, have not been for a while. They don’t actually protect your screen.

I have gone through several sacrificial layers of glass to save several versions of gorilla glass (etc). I have also lost several screens later because I wasn't quick enough in replacing the sacrificial glass.

Some of us are harder on our things than others...

Re: Vapor chamber tech keeps iPhone 17 Pro cool

#95
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you propose making a device that people wouldn't feel the need to put a case on? You could make the whole thing out of rubber but that's still going to take cosmetic damage that people want to protect the device from. You could make it easy to replace that rubber... but at what point is that not just functionally the same as a case?

One way would be to have an accelerometer detect that the phone is falling, and have tiny spring-actuated bumpers, wires, or feet extend from the corners of the phone to catch its fall. Little stainless-steel or Nitinol wires would do great. Here's a patent for the idea which just expired this year: https://patents.google.com/patent/US7059182B1/ Apple also patented some versions of this, although I think not as nice…

Can't wait until the sensor is hacked and it becomes a remote controlled implement of pain.

Re: Vapor chamber tech keeps iPhone 17 Pro cool

#96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One way would be to have an accelerometer detect that the phone is falling, and have tiny spring-actuated bumpers, wires, or feet extend from the corners of the phone to catch its fall. Little stainless-steel or Nitinol wires would do great. Here's a patent for the idea which just expired this year: https://patents.google.com/patent/US7059182B1/ Apple also patented some versions of this, although I think not as nice…

Back when the early iPods actually contained a spinning hard drive, they had something similar. If it detected a fall, it would quickly park the hard drive to avoid damage.

Same for ThinkPads.

Re: Vapor chamber tech keeps iPhone 17 Pro cool

#97
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The titanium iPhones, at least, are nearly impervious to scratches when dropped on concrete or asphalt from a reasonable height. I “scientifically” test this pretty often. Because the iPhone 15 pro was significantly lighter than previous pro models, I wanted to avoid a case to get the most out of this improvement. However, I wouldn’t have even experimented with not using a case if it weren’t for the applecare+ plans…

Phones 20 years ago didn’t have expansive glass-covered screens. The biggest I had (blackberry curve) was fairly plasticky and quite sturdy, when dropped it might sometimes eject the battery compartment cover but otherwise survived in perfect working order. And of course Nokias were almost indestructible.

Good point. I did have a Kyocera 6035 which I dropped and broke the screen on (years past its useful life) but that was an exotic device.

Re: Vapor chamber tech keeps iPhone 17 Pro cool

#98
post #76
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Watching that video, the first thought I have is "So much engineering and I still need to buy a phone case with my new phone?" I'm guessing phone cases are still pretty much required if you drop your phone once or twice a month onto cement/asphalt/marble/etc from pocket height. I would be really curious to hear the internal debate at Apple wrt design tradeoffs + durability. E.g. how much of the iPhone design is only…

I’ve been caseless for a while and have had a couple of drops and the phone has been fine. When I eventually upgrade my phone, I’ll probably stay caseless, or add minimal protection. Mainly cause if the increasingly rare catastrophic drop happens, it’d be unpleasant to deal with. I do like some cases for their design elements, I might use one to just further personalize my phone.

I don't know what it is about iPhones but I find them to get damage/chips/scratches super easy compared to the Android phones I've used.

Maybe the new phones are better, but I was quite disappointed when I noticed how easy the paint came off. What's the point of a pretty phone if you're gonna need me to put a case around it?

Re: Vapor chamber tech keeps iPhone 17 Pro cool

#99
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The titanium iPhones, at least, are nearly impervious to scratches when dropped on concrete or asphalt from a reasonable height. I “scientifically” test this pretty often. Because the iPhone 15 pro was significantly lighter than previous pro models, I wanted to avoid a case to get the most out of this improvement. However, I wouldn’t have even experimented with not using a case if it weren’t for the applecare+ plans…

Phones 20 years ago didn’t have expansive glass-covered screens. The biggest I had (blackberry curve) was fairly plasticky and quite sturdy, when dropped it might sometimes eject the battery compartment cover but otherwise survived in perfect working order. And of course Nokias were almost indestructible.

Yeah people forget how nearly indestructible the old Nokia candy bar phones were.

Re: Vapor chamber tech keeps iPhone 17 Pro cool

#100
post #16

This is a heat pipe. A technology from the 60s. Your laptop almost certainly has heat pipes in it. They usually use alcohol rather than water as the phase change material though. The (relatively) novel thing is that it's packaged small enough to be in a phone. I suspect the only reason it hasn't been used in handhelds more is because the TDP of mobile processors wasn't high enough to warrant it.

Vapor chambers are in laptops already. Mostly gaming laptops, because they need help getting the heat away from GPUs.

The miniaturisation of vapor chambers is cool, though. Not new (phones have been coming out with those for years), but it's not "just" another heatpipe.

I think that the fact that more and more phones producing so much heat that they need vapor chambers is also something worth writing about.

That said, most news media seems to have drunk the Apple kool aid because they all rave about the vapor chamber for some reason. I guess iPhone media is just a few years behind the curve.

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