The iPhone Duo’s cooling system hides a clever trick inside its hinge

Key Points:

• Apple’s new A20 Pro chip, powering the iPhone 18 Pro series and iPhone Duo, is the first iPhone SoC built on a 2 nm process, featuring enhanced CPU and GPU performance and a second display engine for the Duo model to support dual screens.
• The iPhone Duo incorporates a unique thermal solution by routing a flexible graphite pipe through the hinge, allowing heat transfer between the two halves and increasing surface area for heat dissipation despite the device’s folding design.
• Apple developed a new vapor chamber cooling system paired with a proprietary "metal over foam" material that effectively bridges the SoC and vapor chamber, optimizing heat removal while meeting mechanical requirements.
• The flexible graphite hinge material was co-engineered by Apple’s thermal and mechanical teams to ensure durability and thermal connectivity throughout the product’s lifecycle, addressing the challenges posed by the folding mechanism.
• Additional architectural innovations in the A20 Pro include placing DRAM next to the processor instead of stacking it, enhancing performance and efficiency, as detailed in Apple’s interview with PCMag.