Foldable phones could be hot in more ways than one

Date:
Wed, 21 Oct 2026 10:16:50 +0000

Description:
Foldable phones expose the thermal limits of edge AI and the need for new cooling solutions.

FULL STORY ======================================================================Copy link Facebook X Whatsapp Reddit Pinterest Flipboard Threads Email Share this article 0 Join the conversation Follow us Add us as a preferred source on Google Newsletter Subscribe to our newsletter The most fascinating thing
about Apple 's new iPhone Duo and others like it may not be that it folds. It may be the innovation required to keep it cool. Because at a time when performance demands from edge AI continue to increase, weve now taken available smartphone real estate and though not exactly halved it constrained it more than ever. And that impacts heat. Which impacts performance.

What makes the Duo interesting isn't simply the engineering required to
create a folding phone. It's that Apple is confronting the same challenge every edge device manufacturer now faces: AI capability is increasing faster than our ability to manage the heat it generates. Mike Housholder Social
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VP and GM of Thermal Management at xMEMS Labs. Thats why I believe were entering a new phase of device innovation, with thermal design increasingly shaping whats possible. In the edge AI era, managing heat helps determine
what a device can do, how long it can sustain performance, and how small or thin it can be. Latest Videos From TechRadar Watch full video here:

The iPhone Duo is just the latest reminder that smartphone manufacturers have run into a stubborn engineering problem: How to keep mobile processors cool when theres almost nowhere left to put a cooling system.

For its part, with the Duo, Apple has packed its A20 Pro and other heat-generating electronics into an exceptionally thin, foldable design. Its also created a custom vapor chamber to help dissipate heat and sustain performance in the new form factor. You may like IFA 2026 'Best in Show' awards: our 25 favorite reveals at the Berlin tech expo Why AI hardware needs privacy built in from the start Why Arm is set to help power the next generation of AI workloads and beyond

The latter is more than an engineering footnote. Its a glimpse at a challenge the edge AI industry is starting to confront. Thermal design and industrial design are inseparable. And new solutions to thermal challenges must be considered. Foldables Make the Challenge Obvious Foldable phones make the thermal management challenge easy to perceive. Conventional smartphone design gives engineers a relatively predictable enclosure in which to arrange the processor, battery, cameras, and thermal management system. A foldable must accommodate a hinge and two display sections while remaining thin enough to fold comfortably and fit in a pocket. Are you a pro? Subscribe to our newsletter Sign up to the TechRadar Pro newsletter to get all the top news, opinion, features and guidance your business needs to succeed! Contact me
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At the same time, the processor and other electronics still generate heat more, even, when we consider how people are starting to use mobile devices. Which means foldable designs necessarily concentrate significant heat-generating components into smaller and thinner portions of the device, precisely where space for thermal hardware is already constrained.

In general, vapor chambers remain one of the most effective ways to manage heat in a compact electronic device. They work by moving heat away from a concentrated source, such as a mobile processor, and spreading it across a larger area. But vapor chambers ultimately spread heat rather than remove it.

Sure, as processors become more powerful, manufacturers can increase the size and effectiveness of the vapor chamber. But eventually that thermal component itself becomes a design constraint, especially in foldable phones. What to read next Powering the AI revolution: Inside the grid, thermal, and interconnect challenges limiting data center growth Enabling the next generation of AI data centers Those two jobs need different physics: Rebellions CEO says training and inference need different chips Agentic AI Makes the Challenge Urgent In foldables, innovating around thermal management is itself an admirable design goal if folding were the only technological advancement engineers had to tackle. But theyre pushing the envelope on physical design at the exact moment when smartphones are being asked to do much more. Namely, to process agentic AI workloads.

As agentic AI moves from the cloud to edge devices AI-capable smartphones, wearables, glasses, and more thermal management becomes the industry's most important challenge. Imagine a new foldable smartphone with its own specialized thermal management system, designed to accommodate an innovative new form factor. Now imagine asking that foldable to process vast amounts of data differently than before.

Unlike traditional mobile apps that perform discrete tasks, AI agents operate continuously. They sense their environment, preserve context, analyze streams of data , and act in real time.

In my view, the industry is still underestimating how significant this transition will be. Historically, a smartphone's thermal profile was defined by short bursts of activity: launching an app, streaming a video, capturing a photo. Agentic AI at the edge changes that model entirely. Devices are moving toward persistent intelligence, continuously sensing, processing, reasoning, and responding. With these sustained workloads, a devices ability to manage heat becomes a defining constraint on its performance.

Passive thermal technologies remain indispensable. Vapor chambers, graphite, heat spreaders, and advanced materials will continue to play a critical role in future devices. The challenge is that Edge AI introduces thermal loads
that increasingly benefit from more than heat spreading alone. As devices become thinner and workloads become more persistent, designers will need additional ways to not just to move heat away from sensitive components, but to move heat out of the system entirely. Micro-Cooling Complements the Vapor Chamber So here we are, with foldable smartphones capable of agentic AI processing. Its a perfect storm of thermal design challenges. Engineers can continue enlarging or customizing the thermal systems they integrate into new and different form factors. Or they can find other ways to extract more thermal performance from available space.

The latter approach is where active, micro-cooling technology becomes a
viable and important solution.

Unlike miniature rotary fans, which exist today and take up precious real estate of their own, MEMS-based piezoelectric actuators, fabricated in silicon, generate airflow inside extremely compact packages. Basically, its a fan on a chip, capable of precise active cooling that fits where conventional solutions cannot.

With micro cooling (Cooling), heat isnt just spread out, its removed from the device entirely before it can sink into the case, delaying or eliminating thermal throttling. This hybrid approach to cooling in highly constrained spaces delivers better thermal performance in todays AI-enabled smart
devices.

It also creates greater design flexibility a must as devices themselves become more physically flexible. If active Cooling can provide additional thermal performance, manufacturers may not need to maximize the physical dimensions of vapor chambers. A more appropriately sized, passive thermal system could be paired with localized active Cooling and thereby free up internal volume for other components and give designers more flexibility in how a device is assembled.

Put simply, with Cooling, thermal hardware wouldnt have to consume as much of a devices design envelope. Cooling As Part of the Compute Architecture The implications extend beyond folding smartphones. AI glasses, headphones , watches, robots, and other edge devices face the same fundamental problem, often with even tighter constraints on size, weight, and power.

The industry wants to put more intelligence into mobile devices while simultaneously making them smaller and more comfortable. That creates a physical contradiction. More compute generates more heat. Smaller devices provide less room to manage it.

Cooling offers a way to change the equation. Not by eliminating vapor
chambers and other passive solutions, but by supplementing them with
localized active cooling that provides additional thermal headroom while giving product designers more freedom.

As AI runs more continuously in the background, edge devices will spend more time computing and less time idle. Sustaining performance will matter as much as reaching peak capability. Foldable phones make this challenge acute, but
it extends across the edge AI market as more intelligence and local
processing place greater demands on compact hardware.

That intelligence has a thermal cost. Over the next decade, progress will depend as much on what physical devices can sustain as on what AI models can do. Thats why I believe thermal management is becoming a foundational technology of the edge AI era. The companies that solve this challenge will help define the next generation of intelligent devices.

Manufacturers already know this, which is why thermal management is so essential to product design. Cooling is the innovation behind the innovation like smartphones that fold. Check out our list list of the best product management software . This article was produced as part of TechRadar Pro Perspectives , our channel to feature the best and brightest minds in the technology industry today.

The views expressed here are those of the author and are not necessarily those of TechRadarPro or Future plc. If you are interested in contributing find out more here: https://www.techradar.com/pro/perspectives-how-to-submit



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