The iPhone 16 Plus was the first large device in my long history as an iPhone user. I wanted the larger display but couldn’t settle for the Plus’s larger footprint. After nearly two months with the handset, I’m convinced that the iPhone 17 Air will be the best option for me once the iPhone 17 hits stores.
I’m ready to make all sorts of compromises to get a large-screen iPhone with a slim profile. I’ll accept a single-lens camera experience, the disappearance of SIM cards in Europe, a less-than-stellar speaker, and even battery life that can’t possibly be as good as the iPhone 16 Plus.
The compromise I’m not going to go for concerns iPhone performance. The iPhone 17 Air should rock the same A19 chip as the base iPhone 17 model. I wouldn’t want Apple to nerf the Air variant in any way by throttling performance to prevent overheating. That’s something Apple could always do, especially considering the brief overheating issues with the iPhone 15 Pro in the first weeks after launch.
That’s why a leak saying every iPhone 17 model will get vapor chambers this year is music to my ears, no matter how boring it might sound.
Most iPhone buyers will not care about how the iPhone they’re about to buy handles the heat coming from that fast processor and the battery. They’ll want the brand-new device to “just work” as soon as they take it out of the box.
But then, when the same buyers experience overheating issues with devices like the iPhone 15 Pro, they’ll want it fixed. They’ll want Apple to handle it without impacting the iPhone’s performance.
The iPhone 16 series doesn’t come with cooling issues, or they would have been obvious by now. Overheating was never a thing on the iPhone 16 Plus. Apple did, after all, improve cooling on these iPhones.
Apple didn’t add a vapor cooling chamber to the iPhone 16 models, though it might have such plans for this year’s iPhones. A vapor chamber might move heat more efficiently from the processor to the phone’s exterior.
During the Galaxy Z Fold 6 and Flip 6 launch events last summer, Samsung made a point of showcasing the larger vapor chambers inside these devices. Many Android flagships feature vapor chamber cooling.
A report from Ming-Chi Kuo said last August that the iPhone 17 Pro Max would feature a vapor chamber, a first for the iPhone. Fast-forward to mid-January, and MyDrivers now claims that all four iPhone 17 models will get vapor chambers for better cooling.
As with other rumors, this iPhone 17 hardware detail is unconfirmed for now. We’ll need to wait until Apple unveils the phones to see the cooling system in action. Teardowns following the iPhone 17’s release will also give us a look inside the four iPhones.
But the rumor is all the more exciting when you consider the latest iPhone 17 Air reports. The ultra-thin phone might be just 5.5mm thick. Apple will have to squeeze a decent battery in that space, along with all the other components that an iPhone 17 series phone will get. Packing a vapor champer inside such a thin body will be a feat of engineering.
We won’t even have to wait until September to see a vapor chamber inside an ultra-thin flagship phone. The Galaxy S25 Slim will reportedly hit stores this May. The phone will feature the same Snapdragon 8 Elite chip as Samsung’s thicker Galaxy S25 flavors. Since Samsung uses vapor chamber cooling tech in these phones, it’ll probably craft one for the Galaxy S25 Slim to ensure proper cooling.
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