Early on February 27, we brought you our hands-on OnePlus Pad review and an in-depth look at the OnePlus 11 concept; after spending some time with them ahead of Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.
However, now that the doors to MWC have officially opened, we’ve been lucky enough to stumble across another ‘cool’ OnePlus gadget that – like the OnePlus Pad – should be hitting the market soon.
While we’ve seen liquid cooling on desktops and even the occasional laptop (like the Asus GX700 which was first unveiled at IFA 2015), we’ve never seen a dedicated liquid cooling system for a smartphone like this before.
Although OnePlus 11 Concept is the flagship of the company integrated liquid cooling, there is no time frame when such technology will become a consumer-ready device. That said, at the OnePlus booth at Mobile World Congress we were shown the OnePlus 45W Liquid Cooler – an external cooling unit with a specialized tank and phone holder that can be connected to almost any smartphone and suck the heat away from the hard-working chipset instantly.
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The device itself is a TEC (semiconductor-based thermoelectric cooler), a water-based system with a tube (in OnePlus’ signature red, of course) leading to what is called the Clip. This springy phone holder weighs only 75 grams and is 51 mm wide, so it remains discreet during use, and the ceramic pad on the inside of the clip allows for quick heat transfer.
In addition to holding the tank and cooling the water, a single button on the top of the unit switches between four levels of cooling when pressed, which also affects the volume of the system.
Who wants liquid cooling in a smartphone?
OnePlus claims its OnePlus 45W Liquid Cooler is capable of cooling the device down to an impressive 20°C / 36°F, which would make a huge difference when gaming intensely, recording high definition videos for extended periods of time, or taxing your phone’s silicone in other ways .
A quick real-world test showed that the clip could almost handle a Google Pixel 7 Pro (without a case) when carefully slid from top to bottom, so any phone that measures 76.6mm or narrower should be able to take advantage of from the cooling properties of the refrigerator and perhaps there is a big catch here.
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While some of the best gaming phones – like the Asus ROG Phone 6D Ultimate – come with dedicated integrated and external cooling systems, OnePlus’s solution is device independent. While there’s no doubt the company would like you to use it with its latest flagship (check out our OnePlus 11 5G review for more on that), the ability to apply this next-level cooling to any smartphone that fits is arguably its greatest strength .
Note: Shortly after OnePlus showed off its cooler, sister company Oppo unveiled a similarly styled Oppo 45w external liquid cooler that delivers the same experience but replaces the clip with a magnetically detachable cooling plate for wireless charging.