apple fans and iphone users can rejoice as the wait is over for the smartphone’s newest iteration, which hit shelves this month. after weeks of waiting, rumors, and scouring technology blogs for information, retailers have the iphone 7 in stores after the phone’s release date of sept. 16.

in celebration of the iphone 7 hitting the market, coolingzone will be spending this week discussing how thermal engineers have managed to keep the “hottest” mobile products “cool” for everyone to enjoy.

(courtesy of www.ifixit.com)

as the demands of smartphone users have increased, from apps to games to streaming video to enhanced cameras, engineers have been forced to look for methods to optimize power, battery life, memory, and processing capability all within the small confines of a phone and its necessary high component density.

managing all those factors required the application of sound thermal engineering techniques to create increasingly complicated and innovative designs.

among the thermal solutions devised by engineers are thermal sensors that shut a phone down if the internal temperature gets to a dangerous level, as well as thin heat pipes running from the processor or thermally conductive material placed over the processor to help dissipate the heat.

in a recent article about mobile devices for semiengineering.com, technology editor and engineer brian bailey wrote, “heat is the ultimate limiter. if you cannot comfortably place the device on your face or wrist, then you will not have a successful product. controlling heat, at the micro and macro levels, is an important aspect of the overall product design.”

he went on to explain several of the design elements, and the thinking behind them, that engineers have applied to mobile devices to minimize the effects of heat both on the system and the user.

bailey spoke with several thermal engineers who noted heat sensors are important components but there has to also be consideration of component placement and the temperature level at which those sensors kick in to shut down the system.

one engineer said, “there are many different operating scenarios, and the data matters. video playback may be hot, but it is dependent on the video stream. you also need to predict trajectory. if the design could operate at 120 [degrees celsius], you may kick in thermal mitigation at 100 [degrees] long before it reaches the critical level.”

thanks to the efforts of thermal engineers, manufacturers continue to add more and more to their phones without losing battery power or product longevity and mobile users are free to play games or watch the latest movies on their phones without fear of being burned.

while consumers fret over the lack of headphone jacks or issues in the ios 10.0 update, coolingzone will be highlighting the thermal management that goes into making smartphones work and how important thermal solutions are to keeping users connected through mobile devices. 

look for these articles this week related to mobile device cooling from coolingzone media sponsor qpedia magazine:

"industry developments: smartphone cooling systems"
"thermal performance of thin flat heat pipes"
"new design concepts in 3d stacked chips and their thermal challenges"
"technology review: mobile device thermal management"