Apple May Finally Adopt Vapor Chamber Cooling For The iPhone 17 Pro

The iPhone 17 Pro and Pro Max may be getting vapor chamber cooling to optimize the performance of their A19 Pro processors, according to a leaked source. If true, this will prove that Apple is finally taking CPU throttling seriously (especially due to heat build-up over time when playing AAA games or rendering video). This is one area where Apple has lacked behind many flagship Android counterparts, which in those applications, have seen very positive effects.

New (unconfirmed) information by Setsuna Digital (via Weibo) is purporting that Apple's iPhone 17 Pro and Pro Max will be the first iPhones to adopt vapor chamber heatsinks. Doing so should immensely help with heat management of the powerful A19 Pro chipset under heavy sustained load. Heat is the nasty enemy for any processor—when stressed by heavy AAA title gaming, for example, eventually phone performance will either become unstable or automatically throttled by the system, leading to things like crashes, decreased quality and/or stuttering.

To be honest, the average iPhone user noodling away on TikTok or Candy Crush will be shocked to learn that their iPhones can even overheat. For power users and gamers, vapor chamber cooling has been a long-requested feature, however. For one, the iPhone 15 Pro had significant thermal issues when pushed partly thanks to Apple using the same sandwich cooling pads from previous models while upping the clockspeed on the A17 Pro. The iPhone 16 series improved on that somewhat with its recycled aluminum thermal substructure, but that only serves as a stop-gap solution.

Vapor chamber cooling has proven its worth with performance-oriented smartphones like the ASUS ROG 9 series, Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra, and OnePlus 13, just to name a few. The only downside to the technology is that heat drawn from the internals are dissipated to the frame/back cover of the phone. That, nonetheless, has been resolved through optimized channeling, as heat that reaches the user's hand is felt, but not uncomfortably so.

Even though the iPhone 16 just came off the presses, some are genuinely excited about the next generation (and perhaps even more so now, on rumors of Apple adopting vapor chamber cooling). The entire iPhone 17 lineup is believed to sport unique rear camera islands ranging from a horizontal visor to a large rectangle like the Pixel 2 XL. To build the excitement, Apple's throwing in a new model, too, called the iPhone 17 Air. At 5.5 mm, it'll be the thinnest phone in the company's history.

Photo credit: Asherdipps (via X)