OnePlus Unveils OnePlus 11 Concept Phone with Active CryoFlux

OnePlus today unveiled its OnePlus 11 Concept smartphone, which the company has been teasing for a few weeks. The device, which is not intended to enter production, is designed to showcase the company’s new Active CryoFlux cooling solution.

Active CryoFlux is a fancy term for what is essentially a closed-loop liquid cooling system of the type you’d find on a desktop PC but drastically miniaturized for a smartphone.

At the heart of the system is a ceramic piezoelectric micropump, which circulates fluid through a series of tubes between an upper and lower diaphragm. The micropump takes up less than 0.2 cm² of space on the device. The pump circulates the fluid, which moves around the tube which acts as a heat sink and radiator, absorbing heat from the SoC and slowly releasing it on its way back to the pump.

OnePlus claims the Active Cryoflux can lower temperatures by up to 2.1°C, which is good for an additional 3-4 frames per second in a game. While charging, temperatures can drop by 1.6°C , which saves 30 to 45 seconds on the charging time.

The rest of the features are mostly cosmetic. OnePlus has used curved, clear glass for the back cover, which the company says is unibody, although there’s clearly a bezel on the sides. The back cover lets you see the tube underneath, which has been partially lit. The area around the camera has also been brightened and the camera has a new guilloche engraving pattern.

It’s unclear whether OnePlus will actually implement this technology in a production smartphone. The company had shown an interesting class of self-tinting camera coverage on the Concept One at CES 2020 but never implemented it on a production device. Of course, not every concept feature has to be produced and sometimes it’s just cool to show new things you’ve been working on alongside.