First-tier players may release smartphones that adopt heat pipes by the end of the year
Aaron Lee, Taipei; Joseph Tsai, DIGITIMES [Monday 17 June 2013]
Smartphone players such as Apple, Samsung Electronics and High Tech Computer (HTC) have started showing interest in adopting ultra-thin heat pipes for their smartphones and are expected to release heat pipe-adopted models in the fourth quarter, at the earliest, according to sources from cooling module player.
NEC has just recently released a new smartphone, Medias X06E, using a heat pipe. The smartphone adopts a 4.7-inch 1,280 by 720 OLED display, a 1.7GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro 4 processor and Android operating system, targeting mainly female consumers.
Since the conventional graphite plus foil cooling method is no longer able to dissipate enough heat in modern smartphone models efficiently, after 4G becomes a common transmission specification for smartphones in the future, the heat problem is only expected to become worse.
The heat pipe in NEC's smartphone has a diameter of only 0.6mm, far smaller than ultrabook heat pipes' 1-1.2mm, allowing the heat pipe to fit into smartphones' limited space.
Currently there are already several cooling module players including Japan-based Furukawa Electric, Taiwan-based Chaun-Choung Technology, Auras and TaiSol Electronics, are developing 0.6mm heat pipes; however, because the heat pipes only have a yield rate of 30%, these players are working aggressively over improving their production currently.