While the foldable iPhone is a new challenge for Apple’s thermal engineering team, they have come up with creative ways to use the device’s hinge to their advantage. Here are the details.
The iPhone Duo’s bezel has a flexible graphics tube
PCMag Recently sat down with Dan Murray, Apple’s vice president of silicon engineering, and Banafsheh Barabadi, the company’s senior manager of thermal product design, to discuss the architecture of the A20 Pro chip.
The new SoC, which powers the iPhone 18 Pro, iPhone 18 Pro Max, and iPhone Duo, is Apple’s first iPhone chip built on the 2 nm process, following the technology’s launch with launch. The M6 chip in the Mac mini In August.
And while the A20 Pro was designed with all three new iPhones in mind, the iPhone Duo version packs some extra capabilities. These include a second display engine to run both screens simultaneously.
from PCMag:
The A20 Pro version of the iPhone Duo is slightly different. “For the iPhone Duo, we added a second display engine to support the simultaneous operation of the internal and external displays,” said Murray, “and with increased CPU and GPU performance, we ensure that we can deliver a smooth user experience across displays.” For indoor displays, we’ve also added support for placing the FaceTime camera behind the display.”
Yes report Offering a truly fascinating, in-depth look at the A20 Pro’s heat and the new ventilation chambers that Apple has developed to keep them at bay. That includes what Apple calls “metal over foam,” a material that iFixit also examined during a recent teardown of the iPhone 18 Pro.
The second pillar is a new material that bridges the gap between the A20 Pro and the vapor chamber. “We call it metal rather than foam,” says Barabadi, and it “basically creates a direct and mechanically consistent thermal bond between the SoC and the vapor chamber. It’s highly efficient at dissipating heat, meeting the stringent mechanical requirements of the system. It took months of development to get the material properties really right to be able to use this material.”
Perhaps the most interesting thing from the story is that Apple has improved the thermal performance of the iPhone Duo, especially given the challenge of cooling the device that is twice as thick when folded.
from report:
“This is one of the most technically challenging aspects of our design,” Barabadi said. To deal with the problem, Apple sent a flexible graphite tube through the hinge itself to transfer heat between the two halves, thus increasing the area available for heat dissipation. “This part need(ed) together between our thermal team and the mechanical team. It is a flexible material that needs to survive, as you can imagine, many cycles of the hinge while maintaining its thermal connection, and its structural integrity throughout the life cycle of the product.”
PCMagMurray and Barabadi’s interview also delves into the A20 Pro’s architecture, including the benefits of placing the DRAM next to the processor instead of on top, and you can Read it in full here.
