- The iPhone 17 Pro and 17 Pro Max come with a sealed vapor chamber for improved thermals.
- This system relies on an ionized drop of water, which helps to spread heat evenly in your iPhone, delivering 40% sustained performance.
- With improved cooling, coupled with the A19 Pro chipset, the iPhone 17 Air could be the best gaming iPhone yet.
Apple has brought console-level games to its iPhones, but you can barely play them for more than 20 minutes before the device starts burning up and dips the framerates to oblivion. With the launch of the new iPhone 17 series today, Apple has added vapor chamber cooling to its Pro models. This is the one feature users have been requesting for years, and now that it’s here, it could make the iPhone 17 Pro and 17 Pro Max the best gaming iPhones yet.
What Does Vapor Chamber Cooling Mean for iPhone 17 Pro and 17 Pro Max?
A vapor chamber is essentially a heat spreading system that uses deionized water that goes through condensation and evaporation to disperse heat more effectively throughout the device, keeping it away from the CPU and GPU of your phone.
It is typically seen on high-end Android smartphones or gaming-centric devices, where longer and smoother performance is prioritized. But this will be the first time we get to see it on an iPhone.
How iPhone 17 Pro’s Vapor Chamber Could Help in Gaming
Having a vapor chamber wouldn’t magically solve the heating issues, but it would be a big jump in thermals. According to Apple, the new sealed vapor chamber, along with the aluminium unibody design, should deliver 40% better sustained performance.
This is much better than the thin graphite sheet that previous iPhone models have used, since a vapor chamber can offer better heat dissipation, preventing the phone from running hot.
It will provide better framerates and smoother gameplay, which can be an advantage for shooter titles. This will be especially noticeable in demanding games like Resident Evil, Assassin’s Creed, or Genshin Impact. Plus, it lowers the chances of the device getting uncomfortably hot, making the gameplay experience choppy.
There’s More to It Than Just Gaming
If you look at it from another perspective, this upgrade also brings some other crucial improvements for video recording. Let’s say you are shooting in ProRes RAW, a new format introduced with the 17 Pro, for a long duration, then the iPhone will heat up, resulting in faster battery drain and hiccups in performance.
This is also something that the new vapor chamber can help with, as you would be able to record video for longer before the device throttles. The new cooling system paired with the A19 Pro chipset should not only help keep the heat at bay but also allow for improved performance in gaming for longer durations in comparison to the previous iPhones.
This is one of the big improvements that has come to iPhones this year, and I hope that Apple brings the same to its base iPhone 18 next year.
