This may seem like an odd idea, but I’ve experienced some over heating problems. I honestly don’t mind a bigger phone, so I was curious if having a different back cover for the phone would be viable, one with a built in cooling fan next to the camera (where it tends to heat up, and so where I imagine that the CPU is located).
You can already remove the back cover, so why not have one with it’s own cooling fan, and for simplicity it’s own battery. This may complicate charging however it would be worth it. The cover could connect to the usb-C charging port using fixed wire for data transfer, mainly the temperature of the phone. This could also be very helpful in hot countries, so that you wouldn’t need to be as concerned about the phone over heating.
I’m wondering if anyone can think of a problem with such a concept. A phone case would have to be custom made as well. It would allow people to have some extra choice depending on how they plan to use their phone, I travel a lot and use the phone for gaming, so over heating is a constant issue.
What do people think about this concept, would a cooling fan even work? What about debris such as sand. Would there need to be some sort of thin metal covering to protect the inner workings of the phone from debris (copper plate)?
It may well just be a non viable fantasy. I just want the phone to cool down. People have already discussed a camera upgrade, so perhaps the FairPhone could be more customisable in future, setting it apart from rival brands.
Active cooling (read: fans) are a can of worms you probably don’t want, much less on a mobile device, mostly for the reasons you already give, but also for the fact that moving parts are just problems waiting to happen.
IMHO, the best bet would be a new backplate which acts as a heatsink, preferrably silver in color to reflect any solar infrared radiation that might hit your device. There are cooling pads available that replace the necessity for thermal compund quite well, such pads are cheap and available for NVMe drives.
For the time being, “energy saver” lowers the CPU frequency, saving some heat generation. Other than that, keep your phone out of the sun and don’t store it in your oven. Not much more you can realistically do.
This is a very good point. I have already tried simply using a desk fan, that’s has some success so long as the back cover is off the phone and I’m holding onto the battery. If I were to try your concept, in theory I could simply just bring a small fan around with me and stick it to the back of the phone when it gets too hot. Thanks for the advice.
A fan on a phone? That is a recipe for disaster! Not to mention the battery drain and the fact your palm would be blocking its airflow, it also would become pretty much useless after staying in a pocket or bag, since it would be the perfect lint/dust trap.
As for a passive heatsink, you’d need to rebuild the phone’s motherboard so it exposes the surface of the chips to that heatsink, else it’s pretty much pointless. Thermal pads can bridge only very small distances, else you’d use them as cheap heat pipes…
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I think that instead of trying to treat the symptoms, you should focus on the sickness: Why does your phone overheat?
It shouldn’t do so, at least not without some external reason (hot environment, extremely heavy workload, etc.).
If your phone does overheat without one of those reasons, something something must be amiss, and it’s usually an app gone rogue, and running the CPU non-stop at 100% and full clock speed (which it isn’t supposed to do).
It happened to me once (older phone), and was easily and quickly solved by uninstalling/reinstalling the offending app.
The only time my FP5 overheated (I got a warning message on the screen) was because I was using navigation with screen ON at full brightness on a (very) sunny day in my car. Italian summer
Well, these are very good points. I was mainly considering using a fan with simply and on off switch and it’s own battery. Perhaps a more heat conductive back plate could allow for the fan to simply be on the back of the phone. And I just wouldn’t put my hands over the fan intake or the small gap for the exiting air.
No, I only recently switched to fairphone, so I have the 5. It is much faster than I was expecting, however, Ive burnt my fingers a little from using it.
I just have to remember to not play anything for more than half an hour at a time to give it time to cool down.
It’s performance is amazing when it is cold, so I was wondering if I could keep it cold so that it is even more capable, to get the best performance possible.
And I’ll update the forum if it works so that everyone including those using older models can consider it. The fan will definitely be external, just resting against the back of the phone.
Adding a fan to the phone in a sensible matter is not realistic within a reasonable scope (budget < 100€ and time investment<10h).
Fun fact, there was in the last years released a phone which has a fan:
So it’s possible but rather only if you consider the whole system.
Adding it afterwards is very hard.
Regarding the car problem: place the phone infront of the car vents. I have a vent mount for my phone and it keeps it nice and cool.
My proposal for a reasonable solution would be:
Cut a large square whole in the cover. Replace a highly thermal conductive plate, aka copper. Put thermal pads on the main module and the battery. To improve heat transfer.
Attach head sink with fins to the heat spreader. (where you don’t touch the phone with your hands. eh maybe next to the camera module)
To make this work without experience you may already go far beyond the reasonable scope I mentioned before. (tooling tests, iterations etc. )
I had an almost identical plan. I was thinking of buying another back plate, and fitting it with a metal plate of sorts over a large whole in the cover, and then fitting the back of the case with a fan.
Not sure if there is enough room to put some sort of heat sink in. I don’t really care if it efficient or not, just a simple fan, I was even considering just having a whole in back cover and putting a fan over it with room for air coming in and air coming out.
I would only ever use it when there was no danger to the phone.
As I said earlier, it would be a waste of money and time. One of the best heat isolations known is–Air! The air gap between the phone’s chips and your back plate will prevent any significant cooling.
And thermal paste isn’t a very good heat conductor, it only works in extremely thin layers. Thus the usual instruction to spread it on CPUs with a razor blade until only an extremely thin film remains: The thermal paste itself is rather an insulator, the heat conducting agent in it are the tiny metal particles in it (silver usually), and they only work if they touch directly both the CPU’s and the heat sink’s metal. Thus the thin film and the huge CPU-Heat Sink pressure required. If you’ve ever built a PC you know what I mean.
Short version: Thermal paste is not a magic potion, it only works in specific configurations.
Also, the phone’s back plate holds apparently some important things like the NFC antenna (and other antennas?). It’s not just a sheet of plastic, if you replace it with something else you’ll lose functionality.
