Every year, Samsung crams flagships like the Galaxy S26 Ultra with the fastest chips money can buy, then quietly tells them to slow down so they don't cook themselves. A new report hints that a future model could finally break that habit and outlast rivals like the iPhone 17 Pro Max when the heat is on.
A new report points to liquid cooling
A new report out of South Korea (translated source) claims Samsung has built a dedicated research team to explore active cooling for future Galaxy phones. The group is reportedly weighing both liquid cooling and fan-based air cooling, and liquid is shaping up to be the favorite.
In plain terms, active liquid cooling moves heat away from the chip faster than the passive setups phones use now, so your phone keeps running at full speed instead of stuttering once it warms up. That means smoother performance deep into a long gaming session, quicker video exports, and a back panel that stays cooler in your hand.
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The proposed liquid setup would circulate coolant through a sealed loop wired straight to the chipset, pulling heat away right where it starts. Park Min, the lab director at Samsung's Production Technology Research Institute, reportedly said air cooling works too, but the fan noise and extra weight make it the less appealing pick.
Samsung's Water Carbon Cooling on the Galaxy Note 9 turned water into steam to pull heat off the chip, the same basic idea behind the liquid system it's now reportedly exploring. | Image by Samsung
Samsung wouldn't be first to the party
None of this is fresh ground for the industry, by the way. Brands like Nubia already sell gaming phones that pair liquid and air cooling, and Oppo and Vivo have shipped models with active air cooling of their own.
Here's the catch, though: even those phones don't fully escape the heat. Nubia's RedMagic 11 Pro, with its pump-driven AquaCore liquid loop, holds up better than most, with independent testing clocking it around 75% GPU stability in a 3DMark stress test where ordinary flagships sag far more.
It should be noted that results vary by reviewer, with some stress tests landing the same phone closer to 50%. So active cooling clearly buys you more sustained speed, but it isn't a magic switch that erases heat.
If this pans out, Samsung would be following a trail others blazed years ago, not cutting a new one, and for now it's strictly a rumor with no word on which Galaxy gets the tech or when.
How do you really feel about Galaxy phones running hot?
Why this matters if you have your eye on a Galaxy
Thermal throttling is the reason a phone's benchmark scores look jaw-dropping for thirty seconds and then quietly tumble. When the chip runs too hot, the phone dials performance back to protect itself, and you feel it most during long gaming sessions or heavy on-device AI work. (If you want the deeper breakdown, we explained how thermal throttling works in detail.)
This has been a real Galaxy weakness, not a hypothetical one. When we ran the Galaxy S25 Ultra's bigger vapor chamber through our sustained-performance testing, it flattened out at roughly half its peak score while the OnePlus 13 held nearly 50% higher prolonged performance on the same chip.
The newer model only narrowed the gap rather than closing it. In our Galaxy S26 Ultra review, the phone still throttled enough that its sustained score landed roughly on par with the iPhone 17 Pro Max, despite a 25% bigger initial burst over its predecessor.
Additionally, some S26 Ultra owners on Reddit have flagged the phone heating up and draining fast, with a few describing throttling that kicks in specifically while charging. It should be noted that these are anecdotal reports, not lab numbers.
That particular charging complaint also looks like it may have stemmed from a software bug rather than the cooling hardware, which is a fixable problem and a separate one from the throttling our own testing measured. Either way, the fact that heat keeps coming up in owner threads tells you it's on people's minds.
The vapor chamber is Samsung's current answer, and it's clearly hitting its ceiling as 2nm chips and on-device AI keep cranking up the heat. Liquid cooling would be a real swing at the root problem instead of another small tweak.
S26 Ultra owners have flooded Reddit with heat and battery-drain complaints, some tied to charging. | Image by Reddit
A fix worth waiting for, if it ever ships
RedMagic's AquaCore system circulates coolant with a tiny built-in pump, a real-world look at the active liquid cooling Samsung is rumored to be working toward. | Image by RedMagic
If Samsung genuinely drops liquid cooling into a Galaxy, it would be one of the more meaningful hardware upgrades in years, and one that's frankly overdue. The Ultra line has been coasting on familiar specs for a while now, something we pointed out in that same review.
The catch is that research teams chase plenty of ideas that never make it to a store shelf. Until Samsung commits to a shipping product, this stays firmly in rumor territory, but it's a rumor I would love to see come true.
If you want my unfiltered hot takes on Samsung's cooling saga and the rest of the mobile world, come find me on X and Threads.
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Johanna Romero is a Senior News Writer at PhoneArena, covering mobile technology news across Android, iOS, wearables, and the Google ecosystem she knows best. Drawing on 15 years in IT and tech support from 2007 to 2022, she brings a user-friendly eye for the practical features and lesser-known tricks readers care about. Google named her an official #TeamPixel member in 2022, and she also reviews the latest devices on her YouTube channel, JoJo the Techie.
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