What is the 'vapor chamber' cooling mechanism installed in the iPhone 17 Pro?
Apple's iPhone 17 Pro, released in September 2025, uses a vapor chamber as a cooling mechanism, a concept already adopted by Samsung and Google. Vapor chambers are expensive to manufacture, but are expected to become the industry standard.
Vapor Chamber Tech Keeps iPhone 17 Pro Cool - IEEE Spectrum
The vapor chamber has been revealed in several teardown reports, including one by YouTuber Hugh Jeffrey, who revealed it around 6 minutes and 25 seconds after removing the battery unit.
iPhone 17 Air & Pro Teardown - How Apple Got It So Thin - Does This Affect Repair? - YouTube
The vapor chamber is attached around the center of the frame part being held down with the left hand.
A vapor chamber is a cooling mechanism that contains a liquid, such as pure water, sealed inside. When the liquid evaporates, it absorbs heat from the heat source, cooling the processor and other components. In the case of the iPhone 17 Pro, the chamber contains deionized water. The vapor created by the evaporation of the liquid diffuses within the chamber, then condenses and returns to liquid.
Generally, small devices like smartphones have used a method of dissipating heat using a plate made of a thermal conductor such as copper. However, this method requires a large surface area to dissipate the heat, and to improve performance, three-dimensional shapes like blades are needed for heat dissipation, which makes the device thicker.
Vapor chambers are used to achieve this, but according to Kenneth Goodson, a professor of mechanical engineering at Stanford University who specializes in thermal conduction and energy conversion, reducing the thickness of the vapor chamber too much can significantly reduce its cooling performance compared to solid thermal conductors like copper. Another problem is the cost.
Still, Professor Goodson said that Apple's decision to invest in vapor chamber technology and incorporate it into its devices means that vapor chambers are likely to become the industry standard.
Both the iPhone 17 Pro and Pro Max were out of stock on Amazon.
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in Hardware, Posted by logc_nt