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.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.
So if this actually happens, Samsung would be following a trail others blazed years ago, not cutting a new one. And for now, treat it as a rumor, because the report doesn’t say which Galaxy gets the tech or when.
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.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, the OnePlus 13 still pulled ahead at holding its speed over time.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.
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
A fix worth waiting for, if it ever ships
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 our own review of the latest model.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.
