This article may contain personal views and opinion from the author.
The Galaxy S26 Ultra is slowly taking shape in the form of rumors and leaks. The phone is shaping up to be the next incremental upgrade in the series but it will launch with the next big thing in smartphone hardware: the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5.
This chip promises amazing performance, and judging by the early Geekbench results, it's about to deliver on that promise. However, with these modern fast chips, there's an area that's becoming more and more important—cooling.
We've seen this times and again. The first pass of a synthetic benchmark of your choice is just great—peak performance. But if you try to run consecutive tests or use a stress test, the performance drops quite fast. This normally occurs when the chip gets hot and thermal throttling takes place.
What is thermal throttling?
Thermal throttling isn't a bug or a defect of the hardware. It's rather a safety feature that's built-in by the manufacturers. Silicon chips have an operating temperature range, and when the hardware goes above the upper temperature threshold, this safety mechanism engages.
It lowers the performance until the temperature drops in order to protect the silicon from permanent damage. That's why there's often a huge difference between peak performance and sustained performance.
And when we talk about smartphones, this thermal throttling can be pretty severe, because everything is so tightly packed that a tiny temperature spike can easily snowball. There's nowhere for the heat to go, basically. This is why cooling is becoming one of the key aspects of modern smartphones.
The Galaxy S25 Ultra thermal throttling problems
Even the most premium flagship phones aren't immune to thermal throttling, and the Galaxy S25 Ultra is one such example. One might think the rather big chassis of the S25 Ultra would help with cooling, but that's not the case.
The phone performance drops off a cliff after the first pass in 3DMark's WildLife Extreme stress test, and even consecutive Geekbench runs yield lower performance scores. We're talking about 46% stability score, which is quite low. Not to mention the phone gets quite hot, as you can see in the FLIR images above.
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So, is there a solution? Absolutely, and it comes from a Chinese gaming phone brand. The RedMagic 11 Pro and its quite unique cooling system.
Water cooling on a smartphone? Wait, what?
You read that one right. The latest flagship model of the company features a unique and quite sophisticated active liquid-and-air cooling system. RedMagic says it's the world's first such system, and I'm inclined to believe this statement—I've never seen such a thing on a phone so far.
Technically, the liquid is not water but a server-grade fluorinated liquid. It's basically water imbued with fluorine atoms to make it non-conductive and thermally stable. It's also chemically inert, which means it does not react with other materials such as metals, plastics, rubber, and glass.
These characteristics make it perfect for cooling electronics, and RedMagic has managed to produce a miniature liquid cooling system inside the 11 Pro.
The system includes a tiny 0.85 mm ceramic micro-pump that moves the liquid and a waterproof fan spinning at 24,000 rpm. These work in tandem with a vapor chamber system made with liquid metal to improve the overall cooling efficiency by 50%, according to RedMagic.
This could be a big deal for popular flagship phones
While Apple and Samsung are just getting into the vapor chamber magic (the pro models in the iPhone 17 series are the first ones to feature this tech), this could be a perfect opportunity for some innovation that's actually useful. The Galaxy S26 Ultra seems too close to its launch date to get this quite radical water cooling feature.
Nevertheless, I really think that cooling is an underrated element in modern phones, and every flagship could benefit from this unique system that RedMagic unveiled. We're getting bombarded with big numbers with every new chip, but companies rarely talk about sustained performance.
In the real world we don't use our smartphones for quick bursts of peak performance. Most of the things we do take time, which means we need sustained performance to get the benefits of a new silicon.
Wouldn't it be nice to get a water-cooled Galaxy S26 Ultra or even an iPhone 18 Pro Max, for example? I know it sounds a bit radical, but what do you think?
Oh, and one more thing — we're currently working on our RedMagic 11 Pro review. So, stay tuned for a deep dive into this liquid cooling system and a final verdict on whether it's a gimmick or a game changer.
RedMagic 11 Pro features in a nutshell:
Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5
Up to 24GB RAM and 1TB storage
95.3% screen-to-body ratio
BOE X10 under-display luminous materials
8,000mAh battery, 120W wired and 80W wireless fast charging
520Hz shoulder triggers
Dual air-liquid cooling system
Dual 50MP main cameras
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Mariyan, a tech enthusiast with a background in Nuclear Physics and Journalism, brings a unique perspective to PhoneArena. His childhood curiosity for gadgets evolved into a professional passion for technology, leading him to the role of Editor-in-Chief at PCWorld Bulgaria before joining PhoneArena. Mariyan's interests range from mainstream Android and iPhone debates to fringe technologies like graphene batteries and nanotechnology. Off-duty, he enjoys playing his electric guitar, practicing Japanese, and revisiting his love for video games and Haruki Murakami's works.
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