OnePlus is no stranger to pushing the envelope for innovation in the smartphone industry, and its latest concept device — the OnePlus 11 Concept — is aiming to do just that once more.
Announced at Mobile World Congress, the OnePlus 11 Concept sports the same internal specs as the OnePlus 11, which launched earlier this year, but includes a new active cooling technology dubbed Active CryoFlux. More important than that, it’s also just stunning to look at.
Active CryoFlux is meant to keep the OnePlus 11 Concept cool while it’s charging or being used for GPU-intensive gaming. It speeds up charging times by 30 seconds to 45 seconds and can keep a game’s frame rate and overall performance consistent without significantly increasing the device’s weight or size. It does so by pumping cooling liquid through the pipelines on the back of the OnePlus 11 Concept, which can reportedly lower the phone’s temperature by over 35 degrees Fahrenheit while gaming.
You can see the liquid cooling moving through the phone’s clear rear backside, and the blue liquid even flows around the circular camera housing. And not only that, the camera is also surrounded by “Guilloché etching.” OnePlus describes it as a “very precise decorative technique usually found in luxury timepieces,” and it’s the first time the technique has ever been used on a smartphone.
But, like the name suggests, the OnePlus 11 Concept is precisely that — a concept device. Obviously, the hope is that OnePlus utilizes the PC-like cooling system in a future device, but as of right now, there aren’t any definitive plans to bring this to a phone you can actually buy. OnePlus has shown off similar concept phones in the past that haven’t amounted to anything tangible, so while it would be nice for Active CryoFlux to be the next big thing that OnePlus has up its sleeve, I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for it.
Although it’s not something to put much mental stock into right now, Active CryoFlux is an interesting technology that would be beneficial, especially for gamers who do a lot of their gaming on their phones. Based on what can be accomplished using similar cooling tech in PCs, it feels like Active CryoFlux’s internal cooling pipes are a logical next step for mobile gaming. The light-up pipes are really sleek, making the OnePlus 11 Concept reminiscent of something made by Nothing.
Hopefully, OnePlus does something with the ideas used in the OnePlus 11 Concept since they are so promising and the phone isn’t just a flex for MWC. Maybe it’ll pop-up in another OnePlus phone later this year? Maybe in the OnePlus 12? It’s hard to say for sure, but we can certainly cross our fingers and hope.
