Everyday Favorite: Turn on Phone Cooling Mode with One Tap — Baseus GAMO Thermoelectric Cooling Clip
Translated from the Chinese original.
Introduction
With summer more than halfway over, I have seen many phone users complain that their phones get extremely hot, sometimes even causing frequent stuttering. iPhone users can only joke to themselves: “Cook must have pressed the heat button.”
Why Does It Get Hot?
The A13 Bionic chip in today’s iPhone 11 is one of the most powerful examples around. With such high processing demands, its CPU can generate a great deal of heat in a short time.
When you play a game, for example, the phone places higher demands on the battery, CPU, GPU, and other modules, which accumulate a great deal of heat in a short time. Or when you open the camera and shoot 4K 60fps video, you can clearly feel one part of the phone heating up rapidly after a minute or two.
So an increase in a phone’s heat output is inevitable. What we need to do is find a way to improve cooling efficiency.
What Cooling Solutions Are Available?
There is no denying that the development of smartphones is pushing phone-cooling technology forward in return.
The iPhone’s tendency to run hot is nothing new. Even in autumn and winter, it is more likely to heat up than other Android phones. Although the iPhone’s internal construction is extremely simple and tightly packed, it lacks enough room for heat dissipation. Starting with the iPhone X, Apple began using a dual-layer motherboard design with the CPU sandwiched in the middle. With so little cooling, the temperature naturally shot up, and this once caused me no end of trouble.
In the middle of a team fight, the temperature suddenly gets too high and the phone protects itself with “network cut-off + a forced frozen screen.”
Phone cooling can therefore be divided into active and passive methods. Active cooling is easy to understand.
Fans and liquid cooling are common approaches. One product called the Baseus GAMO Thermoelectric Cooling Clip is compact and uses a thermoelectric cooling material with a fan to assist heat dissipation. The area of the phone’s back that touches the clip can be cooled to as low as 14°C. There are many similar products on the market; Xiaomi and Black Shark make some good ones too.
I was lucky enough to receive the Baseus GAMO Thermoelectric Cooling Clip. Let’s see how this cooling clip brings a phone’s temperature down.
The whole product is white. The temperature display is on the left, and the adjustment switch is on the right. There are three modes—OFF, AUTO, and TURBO—and you can also switch between Fahrenheit and Celsius. In a no-load test, AUTO held a steady 18°C and TURBO held around 14°C. Testing showed that the device could reach its minimum temperature very quickly.
It uses a USB-C interface, the mainstream power connector on today’s market, which makes powering it convenient. It is worth mentioning that the inside uses black aluminum-alloy cooling fins and a hydraulic-bearing fan. This provides efficient cooling while keeping the fan quiet, so it does not interfere with voice chat during gaming tests.
There is a spring-loaded lever on each side, with a silicone pad on top. The cooling clip attaches to the phone through these two levers.
All right, after saying so much, here is how this cooling clip performs in use.
Real-World Gaming
Test phone: iPhone 7 Plus. Game: GRID Autosport (highest graphics quality).
To avoid wasting the audience’s time, I did not hesitate to turn the cooling clip straight to Turbo mode.
After installing the clip, the temperature display showed that the back of the phone was around 31°C.
P.S. Apple’s A10 processor is seriously powerful.
What surprised me was how quickly the temperature dropped after two minutes of cooling. After around 5–7 minutes, it had fallen to about 19°C.
My Take
The Baseus cooling clip is a lifesaver for serious gamers, especially players who care about gaming performance. In my own tests, its grip did not interfere with operation. If you are also troubled by overheating phones and dropped frames in games, the Baseus cooling clip fully meets your needs.
The current price is around RMB 149!!!
Of course, some highly capable players with strong DIY skills could also try buying a thermoelectric cooling plate and making their own phone clip. It could achieve a similar effect and cost even less.
One thought for the future: It would be more practical if the clip had a built-in battery instead of having to stay plugged in while in use!