LG's First 5G Phone Includes Vapor Chamber to Prevent Overheating

The chamber covers a good chunk of the phone’s interior to help keep the major components inside cool. LG will show off the 5G device next month at Mobile World Congress.

LG’s first 5G smartphone will debut next month with an interesting feature under the hood: a vapor chamber to prevent overheating.

The upcoming device swaps out the traditional heat pipe for a water-powered chamber, which absorbs heat more efficiently than air. The chamber also covers a good chunk of the phone’s interior to help keep the major components inside cool. Compared with the LG V40’s heat pipe, the vapor chamber is about 2.7 times larger in term of a surface area.

In a press release, LG said it added the vapor chamber to improve the phone’s stability. But left unmentioned was how the cooling mechanism might address a potential concern with the 5G high-speed modem inside overheating when it comes to streaming large amounts of content, like downloading a movie.

We’ll have to wait and see how this all works when the phone debuts at Mobile World Congress next month in Barcelona, Spain. Another lingering question is if any hardware sacrifices were made to include the vapor chamber.

In the meantime, LG has revealed some other key details about the upcoming device, including how it’ll come equipped with Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon 855 processor, which can offer up to a 45 percent faster CPU performance than the older 845 chip.

LG is also well aware the phone’s 5G modem may guzzle a lot of power. So the company included a somewhat large 4,000mAh battery.

The Korean vendor teased the upcoming phone months after Sprint said it was partnering with LG to bring a the first 5G phone to the carrier’s network. The handset is scheduled to arrive in the first half of 2019.