Apple hid a cooling secret inside the iPhone Duo’s hinge, and it could keep your foldable from overheating
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Apple’s new A20 Pro chip gives the iPhone 18 Pro lineup and the iPhone Duo, Apple’s very first foldable arriving on October 23, Mac-level muscle. But more power means more heat, and taming it inside a phone that bends in half was a real headache for Apple’s engineers.
Speaking with PCMag, Banafsheh Barabadi, Apple’s senior manager of thermal product design, and Dan Murray, Apple’s vice president of silicon engineering, explained how the company pulled it off. The coolest part (pun intended) is tucked inside the iPhone Duo’s hinge.
Why was cooling the A20 Pro so tricky?
Older iPhone chips had their memory sitting right on top of the processor. That saved space, but it also made it harder for heat to escape. With the A20 Pro, Apple placed the memory beside the chip, creating a direct route for heat to escape.
Apple then designed the cooling system around that change. A new “metal over foam” material links the chip to the vapor chamber, which has three times the surface area of the iPhone 17 Pro’s in the iPhone 18 Pro. Apple also added copper and graphite layers behind the display to spread heat evenly.
So what’s going on inside the iPhone Duo’s hinge?
Most of these upgrades carry over to the iPhone Duo, but the vapor chamber doesn’t. The foldable gets a slimmer one that sits in the center of the phone rather than acting as its backbone. The bigger problem is the fold itself. The Duo is super slim when open, but when you shut it, it’s twice as thick, making it much harder for heat to escape.
Barabadi called it “one of the most technically challenging aspects of our design.” To solve it, Apple threaded a bendable graphite pipe through the hinge. It moves heat from one side of the phone to the other, giving the Duo more room to cool off.
Since a hinge is always moving, Apple’s thermal and mechanical teams built the pipe together. That way it survives countless folds over the phone’s lifetime without losing its cooling power.
What does it mean for you?
If everything works as Apple says, you can game, record videos, and use Apple Intelligence on your foldable without it turning into a hand warmer. Whether this works or not, we’ll find out soon enough.
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