This chip promises amazing performance, and judging by the early Geekbench results, it’s about to deliver on that promise. However, with these modern fast chips, there’s an area that’s becoming more and more important—cooling.
What is thermal throttling?
Thermal throttling isn’t a bug or a defect of the hardware. It’s rather a safety feature that’s built-in by the manufacturers. Silicon chips have an operating temperature range, and when the hardware goes above the upper temperature threshold, this safety mechanism engages.Â
It lowers the performance until the temperature drops in order to protect the silicon from permanent damage. That’s why there’s often a huge difference between peak performance and sustained performance.
The Galaxy S25 Ultra thermal throttling problems
The phone performance drops off a cliff after the first pass in 3DMark’s WildLife Extreme stress test, and even consecutive Geekbench runs yield lower performance scores. We’re talking about 46% stability score, which is quite low. Not to mention the phone gets quite hot, as you can see in the FLIR images above.Â
Water cooling on a smartphone? Wait, what?
You read that one right. The latest flagship model of the company features a unique and quite sophisticated active liquid-and-air cooling system. RedMagic says it’s the world’s first such system, and I’m inclined to believe this statement—I’ve never seen such a thing on a phone so far.
Technically, the liquid is not water but a server-grade fluorinated liquid. It’s basically water imbued with fluorine atoms to make it non-conductive and thermally stable. It’s also chemically inert, which means it does not react with other materials such as metals, plastics, rubber, and glass.Â
These characteristics make it perfect for cooling electronics, and RedMagic has managed to produce a miniature liquid cooling system inside the 11 Pro.
The system includes a tiny 0.85 mm ceramic micro-pump that moves the liquid and a waterproof fan spinning at 24,000 rpm. These work in tandem with a vapor chamber system made with liquid metal to improve the overall cooling efficiency by 50%, according to RedMagic.
This could be a big deal for popular flagship phones
Nevertheless, I really think that cooling is an underrated element in modern phones, and every flagship could benefit from this unique system that RedMagic unveiled. We’re getting bombarded with big numbers with every new chip, but companies rarely talk about sustained performance.
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In the real world we don’t use our smartphones for quick bursts of peak performance. Most of the things we do take time, which means we need sustained performance to get the benefits of a new silicon.
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Oh, and one more thing — we’re currently working on our RedMagic 11 Pro review. So, stay tuned for a deep dive into this liquid cooling system and a final verdict on whether it’s a gimmick or a game changer.
RedMagic 11 Pro features in a nutshell:
- Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5
- Up to 24GB RAM and 1TB storage
- 95.3% screen-to-body ratio
- BOE X10 under-display luminous materials
- 8,000mAh battery, 120W wired and 80W wireless fast charging
- 520Hz shoulder triggers
- Dual air-liquid cooling system
- Dual 50MP main cameras
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